🎙️ From Newspaper Boy to SaaS Success: Alexander Isora's Maker Journey 🚀

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Today I welcome Alexander Isora on the show, so thanks for accepting my invitation.

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And so Alexander if you should resume your path as a maker in two three minutes,

[00:00:12] [SPEAKER_01]: so you will resume this.

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_00]: My path as a maker began when I was a kid and nothing changed since then.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I was selling newspapers that was my very first business.

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I am selling software.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So it was like my startup path began very early.

[00:00:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I was always feeling like I wanted to make something for myself and a regular job was never an option.

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So how many projects until now have you done?

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Like for example, give me a bit of a list of things.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_00]: My makers experience is quite short.

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_00]: My very first SaaS was successful at Unicorn platform, Blending Page Builder,

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_00]: which I sold in 2022 for 800k.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Before that, I have made a couple of projects which were not SaaS, but something very relevant.

[00:01:13] [SPEAKER_00]: We were making HTML themes with my friend WordPress themes for sale.

[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It was much easier to make, but much harder to sell.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_00]: We were making like 20k grand per year with those themes.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't too much, but for two persons, for two young persons who has no financial

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: and financial dependence, no family, it was quite enough.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And then I decided to make a SaaS.

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_00]: It was my first SaaS.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It was my first single page application in my life.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I acted like a solo founder, so I did it all by myself.

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I did coding, I did marketing, I did the product, the design and it turned well.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Then I sold it.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm making another SaaS, two of them actually.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00]: What's the name of both?

[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_00]: The first one is called Paracast.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like paranormal and caste.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_00]: It generates video for startups.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I decided to make a simple canvas for startups.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Canva is a social media creative editing tool.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It's very simple, but it's so broad.

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: It's for everybody.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't like tools that serve everybody.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I like niches, down tools.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a startup founder or marketer, you sign up for Canva

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: and you can find a template to promote your SaaS or startup.

[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But it will be a super generic.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_00]: It will look awkward.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_00]: It will suit everybody's needs, not only startups,

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_00]: but also, for example, barber shops.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_00]: It's something general, so generic.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not cool.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not sexy.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not selling.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Not worth it, it's not selling.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a big fan of niched, down things

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_00]: when people create SaaS for a small audience

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: and serve it really, really well.

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I'm making right now.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_00]: The second tool is out of my focus right now,

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: but I will pay more attention since next month.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_00]: It's called Copy Brain.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a tool for making written content with AI.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's an AI, a written assistant.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Writing assistant.

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds so cliche.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00]: This is why I called it Copy Brain,

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00]: not Twitter Generator or Blog Post Generator

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_00]: because it sounds lame.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And my idea is to create your second brain to assist you,

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00]: not create a post.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a content generator tool.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It's an assistant tool.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And it will upload your brain into the cloud.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You will have to pass a huge interview.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You will have to send links to all your past blog posts,

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: interviews like this one.

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And it will parse everything, your past

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and create a nearer person based on this data.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It will be second you, pure second brain.

[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And then you will be able to ask it to help you with writing tasks

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: for your marketing routine.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: For example, tweets, generating blog posts,

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: generating LinkedIn posts.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Every post has its own specificity.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: If you make a tweet, it's one type of post.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: If you make a blog post, it's another.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: If you make a post on LinkedIn, it's different from what you see on Twitter

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: because people on LinkedIn want to feel like they know more than you.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So when you post something, you don't have to look like an all-knowing God with a huge brain.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to look a little bit weak.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be a little bit wrong.

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So people will reply to you and say,

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00]: hey, you're wrong.

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: This is how it is.

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And you get engagement.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And there are a lot of such little details that you have to manage.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And this second brain will be able to do it for you.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: This is the second task that I'm working right now.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's interesting.

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So both of things like you were having a problem

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: and you're fixing it for yourself basically, right?

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a question coming back to what you shared at the beginning.

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_01]: You say like when you were a kid, you started selling newspapers and it was like a kind of

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_01]: geese.

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: But what made you, because I suppose when you were selling newspaper,

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_01]: your friend were playing around or doing something else,

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: what made you want them to do that?

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_00]: When you do what you really want, it feels so natural.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Walking or jumping or talking and selling newspapers felt as natural to me

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: as walking or jumping or talking.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It just was so obvious, an obvious thing to do.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_00]: That's all I did.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_01]: That's an interesting, oh, I don't know to talk anymore.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_01]: An interesting point.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Like do you believe you're born entrepreneur or you become entrepreneur for you?

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_00]: In my case, I was born.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I always felt this passion in doing something, solving problems around and looking at

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_00]: possibilities and opportunities, what can be done better, what can be fixed.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But I believe also that people can become entrepreneur and it's a skill which can be trained.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I believe in both ways of becoming an entrepreneur.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I do agree with you.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I agree, you can learn that or you have this fiber inside you.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean you have this fiber, you will be successful, you still have to work on it.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like anything.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: But some people, I have seen that in the podcast, some people start very early,

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_01]: they join into sales stuff.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the same as you when I was a kid, I started to sell stuff.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I asked my mom to buy MP3 sticks and I was downloading in-leagallie music in it,

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_01]: putting music and sell it with the music already because people didn't know

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: to download the music until someone told me at the school, this is illegal to do that.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And you have always like tiny story, I lack from people often,

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_01]: like some entrepreneurs, they start very early, they join it sometimes with

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: things that even not really a good business to do, like mine.

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_01]: But everyone has these tiny stories like that, like for example your newspaper.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I find this is like so much showing what you wanted at the beginning and what you wanted to do.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_01]: For me, it makes a lot of sense to talk about that because many people listening to podcasts,

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_01]: sometimes they have different reasons for becoming an entrepreneur.

[00:08:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is always interesting to understand what was the reason of the people

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_01]: who come in the podcast.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_01]: You help people who listen to also know they own reason, what they want to do things.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, it's like you.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_01]: I do want to improve life of people, I want to bring people something with my craft

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_01]: and that leads me to everything I do right now.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a question about like because you were like at the beginning,

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_01]: okay, doing newspapers is kind of general knowledge and stuff,

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_01]: but then you started to do like HTML team and WordPress team.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So how did you learn coding?

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Like who brought you into this development world?

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's easy.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: When you do all the things then you're interested and you're active.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_00]: You see a lot of stuff and you try a lot of stuff.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_00]: When you try a lot of stuff, you find something interesting and go full bet on this.

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So my story starts when I was at the university,

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I was living in a dorm and I needed money to buy food

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_00]: because students are poor, we need money and they tried to work in a regular job.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not all.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some rich guys, I don't know.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I tried to work in a regular job.

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a job when you knock on door to strangers, they open the door

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: and you ask them to buy your internet connection, home internet

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_00]: and they don't need it because we already have some kind of internet.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_00]: They are angry because you come at night, they are chilling, relaxing

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_00]: and you knocking on the door, that's strange.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And it was perhaps worst two weeks in my life when I realized that regular job sucks,

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_00]: at least for me, I didn't like it.

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So I left it but I still needed money.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So I took, I had like $100 from this internet stuff

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and I bought fake surveillance cameras from AliExpress.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a Chinese Amazon.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Fake cameras, it looks like a regular camera, you can see it on the streets when you work,

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_00]: walk on the streets in big cities or in countries like China, we have a lot of surveillance cameras

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_00]: and these cameras are used by shops.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00]: If you open a shop you want to be some kind of security.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to protect from thieves but if you have a very small shop with a low budget

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_00]: you don't have money for the whole system because the system is quite complicated,

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_00]: it's not only cameras, it's also wires, it's also servers which store the data,

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of data because video is a lot of data.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to maintain it somehow and small shops don't have money for that

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and they bought my small cameras which only had one electronic part,

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_00]: it's a blinking light so it blinks and it looks like real.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So it scares off some marginal people, some thieves, non-serious, often teenagers who need

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_00]: some cash to buy drugs, this kind of stuff and it costs like 100 times cheaper because it's

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_00]: just a piece of plastic, not a huge system with servers.

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So people buy, was buying that and I thought to myself that I need some kind of an internet

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_00]: place, site, whatever that is.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So I started to learn, I found out about WordPress then I had,

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I need to make a change with my WordPress theme, I have had to learn some HTML,

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_00]: then some PHP and so on.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_00]: This is how I became an internet web developer guy.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00]: This is why I'm here.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00]: That's all it started with AliExpress, China, long live.

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's very cool.

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Like a path, I really like how things evolve naturally because when you were kids at the

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_01]: time you couldn't predict where you are right now, definitely you were doing tiny jobs and tiny jobs

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_01]: and probably, I don't know what you were doing in school at this time, what you were studying?

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I was studying electro-energy, plants.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you were not totally going the direction of internet business.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And I love this where you cannot predict your future and you cannot see anything coming.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And you just do things naturally because you found you have a need and you didn't think,

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_01]: most of people are like, oh, I don't know how to do, for example, a website, so I stop.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But you were like, okay, I have a problem. I will just learn for it and that will happen.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, that's the beauty of these things.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the entrepreneur mindset is this kind of thing where you just keep learning for doing

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_01]: things better and keep finding problems to solve.

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Or creating problems.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:14:03] Yes.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's funny you say that like my mom was saying that when I was kids, she was like,

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_01]: if you find something broken, you fix it.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And if it's not broken, you break it to understand how it works.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a great mindset. I must say, yeah, I like it.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, she was happy from the first side, not the second side.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_01]: That's very funny.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I lost you first.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so yeah, what you're going to do is you're going to do something.

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I lost you for a second, but it's fine now.

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we are not like super, super stable, but I think we it's kind of okay.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to go to do your first big success, the big sass.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Why, why, how did this started?

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Like what was your need?

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you didn't like it WordPress or what was the, what made you start at this?

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It started with the HTML themes and WordPress themes I was talking about.

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a little business with working with my friends.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And as you work more and more on websites, eventually, no matter what,

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_00]: every single person who creates websites came up with a website builder idea.

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a super cliche.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Plastics, every web developer has a dream to make a website builder.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And our small duet was not an exception.

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to create a website builder, but the problem is that my friend,

[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_00]: he was an artist, he was a real painter like he painted with oil paints.

[00:15:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And he wanted to create a website builder which was intended to be used by artists.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_00]: It was super creative with canvas style of editing, like animations,

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_00]: parallax, things, unlimited possibilities, creativities.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to create an opposite thing.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_00]: A website builder which will be very limited, extremely limited, but in exchange,

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_00]: as a trade-off of the limits, it will always produce you a beautiful website.

[00:16:18] [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a lot of possibilities, you can break things very easily.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00]: If you have just three or five settings, it's super hard to break a website

[00:16:28] [SPEAKER_00]: because everything is decided for you.

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It's pre-designed.

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So my way was let's limit the user and have just a few,

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_00]: but really beautiful templates.

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_00]: My partner was about building super creative stuff,

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Figma like website builder.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And so we split.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I said, okay, let's split right now.

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And he went and made his thing.

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I made my thing.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is how it started.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You make websites and you want a website builder.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_00]: That's super obvious.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's the reason how you started.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And I really like this thing.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Because you had someone with you and then you decided to go on your own,

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_01]: which is very courageous because most of people are scared of doing that.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So you decided you have to do everything by yourself.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And what was the way you started to market this platform?

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Because you were knowing how to code, but how did you made it known by people?

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_01]: What was your first steps?

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great question.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_00]: The most asked question on the interviews,

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: people want to learn how do you grow yourself?

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And since I was an amateur marketer and amateur startup founder,

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know which channels work, which don't.

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_00]: So I tried them all.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_00]: That's obvious when you don't know where to go.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You just try every path and some of them works.

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So I can say which paths worked exactly because I didn't set up analytics.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So I did everything and gave results, but I couldn't reflect on that

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_00]: because I didn't have analytics because I don't like numbers and tables.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But I did everything.

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It's listed on the directories.

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I tried to install Google Analytics maybe 10 times

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_00]: because every time you open a YouTube or Twitter and every startup expert will tell you.

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: The first step to grow is to set up analytics.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have analytics, you don't have growth.

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yes, it's so smart.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't grow if you don't know where you just come from.

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's give it another try.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was spending like three days staring at these cool dogs

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_00]: and forever changing interface.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, I need to do this to grow.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Then it was like what I do is not helping me.

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just analytics.

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the growth itself.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I should try some things that bring users.

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_00]: So I did and gave the result.

[00:19:15] [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, it was building in public.

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Building in public brings you attention of like-minded people, indie hackers.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Because only indie hackers are interested.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You were building in public in Twitter?

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in Twitter, in indiehackers.com, on product hunt everywhere, everywhere.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_00]: In any place you can post your progress, you do that.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's super easy and obvious.

[00:19:43] [SPEAKER_00]: The problem of building in public is that it gives you a lot of eyes,

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of views, likes, reports, friends, connections.

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_00]: But it gives you very little sales because indie makers don't want to buy.

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Makers like to make.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_00]: That's obvious.

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Also, makers don't have money.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone wants to do his own website builder.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, especially when you're a maker.

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_00]: It means you are a creative guy and you're super talented and skilled.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You can create your website builder.

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It will take you like a week maybe at most.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_00]: So why do you buy one?

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And you also don't have money.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Because indie makers are always empty pockets.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to do it smart.

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_00]: What do I mean?

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Indie hackers, they helped me to grow a lot because they are spreading your

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_00]: product like crazy if they like you.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_00]: It means you have to promote your app across indie makers,

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_00]: but you don't have to rely on this as your sources of income.

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00]: You want indie makers to try your tool to spread it across the world and then

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_00]: some other audience have to buy your tool.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_00]: For example, companies, big companies, corporates, VC founded startups.

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to find it out.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So in my case, indie makers was making all the buzz

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_00]: they helped me with the growth, but it was bringing like 20% or less of revenue.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Not too much.

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_01]: What was the main source?

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know because I don't know the analytics, but I had a lot of different guys.

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_00]: There was one guy who was making websites for plumbers in Australia

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_00]: and he made like 50 websites for 50 plumbers.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to...

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Call this audience a guy from Australia who made websites for plumbers and there are a lot of such

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_00]: examples.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Many different guys.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, indie makers is a great channel of growth, but not as the end goal of making money,

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_00]: but as an audience who can help you spread the world to your product.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was the main source of growth and the second is Produc Hunt,

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_00]: but Produc Hunt is now not as efficient as it was in 2018.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't really matter now to talk about this channel.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_00]: So it helped me, but you know, it's 2024, six years later,

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_00]: it won't help to you.

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to find something else to find again.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to go the way I went.

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Just try every possible path you see on the internet.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_00]: What else?

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I tried paid ads when you pay Google for clicks and it brought like nothing,

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_00]: absolute zero.

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how it works.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Me same, yeah.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_00]: My assumption is it works on large scale.

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to pay like thousands of dollars every month and people see your website one

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_00]: time and another time and after maybe 10 touches they click.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_00]: How many...

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Dollars have been burned.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I think this combination of two things is like you have to have a budget for sure

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_01]: and also you need to fucking understand this word of advertisement.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And for example, for me, I hate ads.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I block ads everywhere.

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't understand this at all.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And if I do ads, I do it in a way I would love them,

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_01]: but this is not how ads work.

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just doing shit and trash money.

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, same here.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how it works.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I've seen with Nico for example, which is an expert in that,

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_01]: he works in some extent if you know what you're doing, definitely that has an impact.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But this is very like, it's another job for me and I don't like this job.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_01]: So I prefer to grow like more naturally with SEO, with being listed everywhere.

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a bit harder sometimes, but prefer that way.

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I think everyone finds his own way to grow and set off rules he can do and not do.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, someone is good at ads.

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Someone is good at connecting with influencers.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Someone is good at creating site projects.

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_00]: You just have to try, see what works, sort of work.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And what was the thing you were good at in the marketing aspect?

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I was good at making site projects.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Site project is a free website, a project application, which is very,

[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_00]: really wants to your main project.

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_00]: For example, we have a landing page builder for startups and I created a website,

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_00]: a site project called, it's called, let me demonstrate you.

[00:24:56] [SPEAKER_00]: It's called UA Generator.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So when you create a website, you want to add some images to it, right?

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_00]: But since you're fresh, you're new, you don't have your application yet,

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_00]: you just started, you need to put something, but you don't have anything.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So I created this website, it's a mock-up UI gallery.

[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You can generate a mock-up of your future application.

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_00]: For example, you're working on a finance application and you're making a website.

[00:25:23] [SPEAKER_00]: But you don't have the application because it will take you months to build

[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and then take the screenshot, but you need the website now.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So you download this, create an image and just use it.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: It's super valuable for our audience.

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And since it's free, it's really easy to push because people like free things.

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_00]: That's obvious.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_00]: You can put it on Reddit, on Twitter, and everybody will be retweeting it

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_00]: and sharing it to each other and bookmarking it because it's free.

[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have your advertisement here.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_00]: For example, here we have the mention of Unicorn Platform, the link here, here

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_00]: and also here.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's entirely free.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_00]: You can download the file, no sign-up, no payments, nothing.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_00]: It costs us like five dollars per month to host this thing.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And I calculated recently, it brought Unicorn Platform nearly 20,000 dollars

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_00]: by literally on Autopilot.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I just launched a website, a free tool and it brought in a few years, you have 20k.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_00]: If you make one free tool as successful as this one every month,

[00:26:40] [SPEAKER_00]: you can have an extremely huge compound effect.

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm wondering why I didn't do that?

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_00]: That was a mistake, I should have focused on that.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting you learned that math.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: On your next project, you will do that for sure.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_01]: But that's very cool.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_01]: That's, I think something I should try more.

[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But on my current SaaS like Cabgo, which is helping mobile apps to do live updates,

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a hard time to picture what I can do as a free tool for people building mobile apps.

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's brainstorm right now, it will be a great exercise.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_00]: What's your application?

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Come again?

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do that an example.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_01]: It's Cabgo, Cabgo.app.

[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very curious about what you will think.

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's brainstorm and come up with a few ideas.

[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Cap, go.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_01]: To give you a bit of context, what I'm doing right now as a free tool strategy,

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I do plugins for Capacitor platform, which is like the platform I am.

[00:27:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Like Cabgo is a plugin already in Capacitor to help people send updates directly to the app

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_01]: without sending it to Apple and Google.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So you bypass Google and Google and Apple.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm doing to have this kind of mindset of free tools is I create other

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_01]: plugins which are free and start to be used a lot.

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And this plugin, advertisement of Cabgo, this is my main source also of people finding me

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_01]: by creating the plugin.

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_01]: But I wonder if there are, I can have also simpler tools because creating a plugin is

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_01]: a bit like time consuming as you have to create a plugin for Android and for iOS.

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_00]: You created plugin for your tool, right?

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm creating.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_01]: So my tool is built on top on the platform named Capacitor.js and it is a plugin already.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And I am building other free plugins to create an ecosystem of plugins.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_01]: I understand.

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_01]: One is paid.

[00:28:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Understood.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So you want your app to be working out of the box, not only for Capacitor.js,

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_00]: but for Flutter, for other tech, right?

[00:28:59] [SPEAKER_01]: That's the possibility I'm thinking.

[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_01]: It will not work for everything, it can work for React Native.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_01]: For sure it's closed, but developing it, it's like I've tried to pay like 1,000 euros to do

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01]: that, but no one managed to do it.

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a huge job.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_01]: But that's one of the things I want to serve other niche as well.

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I understand.

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, I think.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I was saying right now, I think we can find tools for mobile app builder to like free tools like

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_01]: that. For example, I know something which is very popular is to do like a screenshot app

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_00]: screenshot tool.

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_01]: This can be something who can bring a lot of traffic because screenshot of your app is

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_01]: mostly a problem.

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And in Capacitor, I think we have an advantage is like we could give a link because in Capacitor,

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_01]: you can have your website, which is the same code as your mobile app.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So that means someone, if you create a tool where you put the link of the website and

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_01]: you put it in mobile size, then he do screenshot for you already like issued.

[00:30:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So that can be like a screenshot app screenshot for Capacitor can be something

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I think a free tool easy to do and people would do it.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to limit yourself to Capacitor only, right?

[00:30:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Right now my CapGo, my system is working only for Capacitor.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So if I build tools, I should like build on top of that.

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_01]: But in the future, I will have other platform as well.

[00:30:45] [SPEAKER_01]: But Capacitor is already big.

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_00]: What you're talking about creating your application for our frameworks is not a side project marketing.

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_00]: You just put your app on another distribution channels, right?

[00:31:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not the same as side project marketing.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Side project is an entire separate project which has value for your audience,

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_00]: but it's not the product itself.

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00]: So I can imagine a product like maybe generating these updates for your users.

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_00]: For example, you an app coder, a programmer, you make a lot of commits,

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and then you have to push it on the app store and you have to write the changelog.

[00:31:33] [SPEAKER_00]: What's new, right?

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And you can make maybe some kind of bot which will help you to compose

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_00]: this update message from your commits history.

[00:31:47] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good idea.

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very thinking it.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Cool.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's something I even got people asked about, like to have a way to display the changelog.

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_01]: So probably displaying the changelog in the app with a feature is a feature,

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_01]: but also generating the changelog is something that can be nice to do.

[00:32:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:32:09] [SPEAKER_01]: That's very interesting.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for that.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you have maybe sometimes you see an application which has changelog, not

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_00]: so boring, which just lists of changes, but somehow interesting, somehow funny.

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_00]: They put joke in their changelog to entertain you.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_00]: My big companies used to do that.

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I think DoLingo is one of the examples.

[00:32:32] [SPEAKER_00]: You can create a directory of interesting examples of such changelogs.

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_00]: It will take you like 0 seconds to make such a website because it's just a list of images.

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You can find these examples of interesting changelogs, funny changelogs of applications

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_00]: and create such a board.

[00:32:52] [SPEAKER_00]: You will have thousands and thousands of visitors across the internet.

[00:32:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And some of them definitely the director of the best changelog is this.

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Even directory of the best screenshot is also a mobile screenshot.

[00:33:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it can work too.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_00]: My competitor made a site project.

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It's called SAS Pages.

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Let me demonstrate it.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_00]: My competitor, Volkan, Mr. Kaya, Volkan Kaya, he's working on a very solid.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a website builder and he made a grad.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I like his site project.

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It's what you said.

[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a directory of beautiful screenshots, but for website.

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Let me... how do I find it?

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, here it is.

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Ah yes, him.

[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you saw him.

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_00]: It's called SAS Pages and his site project is much more popular than his main product.

[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_00]: He got like 2000 uploads in product content, crazy traffic.

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just a list of screenshots of beautiful websites.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_00]: What you said, a list of beautiful screenshots.

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And super helpful for anybody who works with websites.

[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Same, your product is the same.

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_00]: It will be super helpful for people who work with applications,

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_00]: with publishing the applications on stores, can make categories like...

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Finally, I have already done the...

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I have the scrapper for scrapping App Store already because I did that as

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_01]: for sales.

[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I realized on the App Store, you have the email of each developer

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_01]: because it has to be public in case you have a bug or something.

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So I did scrub the whole App Store, like 3 millions of apps.

[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And I got every email of every developer.

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And I also find I could decompile the APK of Android apps.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And if I decompile it because it's a zip, I could find into the file

[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_01]: if the app was using Capacitor or not.

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So I have a list of emails of every company in the world doing Capacitor app.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I've scrapped a lot of data about the app

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_01]: knowing like how many downloads they have and everything.

[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And I have everything that in the database right now.

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a CSV because I need to host it.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a bit big.

[00:35:18] [SPEAKER_01]: But definitely I have the whole code to do the scrapping.

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So I could scrap the way.

[00:35:22] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think I have already the text.

[00:35:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I have already the text.

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have the screenshot, but I have already the text of the app.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So I could do like already a directory very fast.

[00:35:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Like in a week I can ship it.

[00:35:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just find the best and show the world for the inspiration.

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_00]: People will bookmark it because it's a great directory.

[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, that's a very good idea.

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we'll be fun to do even things for that.

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_01]: That was a good example how you can build free tools.

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's fun.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll have on the podcast.

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I agree.

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_01]: What?

[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, it's 38 minutes now.

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think we can go back to what are you building right now?

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_01]: There's something I want to know a bit more about like so right now you're working mainly in

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Powercast and I'm not sure I get exactly what he's doing.

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_01]: It's video for startups like Canva for startup, right?

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what you say?

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a Canva for startups.

[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I have this on my local environment right now.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So you choose a template.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_00]: All the templates will be for SaaS or startups only.

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I have this one right now and you have this.

[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you just enter your project's name?

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see if it's a cup go and you upload your logotype, something like this.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have a video which you don't have to edit because it's a template

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_00]: and it's really fast to do like just fill in a few fields and you have the video

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_00]: can change style, just basic things.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what I'm working on.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to create a few videos for myself.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It was super hard.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_00]: The gap between just a motion designer, just a guy who knows how to make adopt,

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_00]: how to open adopt After Effects and a guy who can create a decent motion design video

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_00]: is infinite.

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And yes, it's colossal.

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's a big problem which I'm solving right now.

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And the goal of the video is to be in the landing page, right?

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, landing page and social networks.

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I definitely need to do that.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Please release your...

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yes, I will deploy it on this week hopefully.

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_00]: When you scroll your feed on Twitter, for example, you have

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_00]: you see images, videos and texts.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And according to Twitter's research, videos get 1000 more percent more views than texts.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_00]: 1000 more is like 10 times more.

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So people like videos.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Videos are attractive not because they are funny.

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It's because we as humans, we have to notice moving things because if we don't,

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_00]: we will be bite by a snake and die.

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Our ancestors have to locate those little moving things in the woods to run away.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So when we scroll feed and we see something moving, we stop.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_00]: It catches our attention.

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm working on a tool which helps you to be viewed more, to be noticed more.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_01]: That's cool.

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_01]: There's something you shared on Twitter a bit about the fact you sold a unicorn platform.

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to talk with you originally about that.

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like how did you felt after you sold your biggest project?

[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Because often it's like now you could retire.

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_01]: So how do you find purpose again in what you're doing?

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is a topic that you have shared a bit about.

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't be retired because 800k is not too much.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_00]: First I got only 400k.

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_00]: The rest half is not cash.

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the stocks of the company which acquired me, Mars X.

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just 400k.

[00:39:51] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not too much.

[00:39:52] [SPEAKER_00]: You can retire with this, I guess.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't decided, I haven't invested any in stocks or ETFs because

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'm not that smart as I used to think.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I had to do that but I didn't.

[00:40:07] [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_01]: You just keep it in a bank account?

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I think this is also something you could get maybe like someone working for you on this topic.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Investing your money at one point.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I think this has to be done sadly because as always it just devaluates itself.

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for the tip.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to find a person for my project but it's nearly impossible because it has to be

[00:40:40] [SPEAKER_00]: a person which is familiar with gold and with motion design.

[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Such persons are unique.

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe 10 or 100 of such people.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I was talking about the money things, finding someone for the money to handle it for you

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_01]: since you know how to do this.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_00]: I never tried to think about this.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do I have to think about this?

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a problem?

[00:41:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Like yes, money are burning away so what?

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean it's a problem if you believe so.

[00:41:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Like some people don't like the fact like they add that much and over a year it's less.

[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_01]: But in fact I don't know things consume everywhere so it could be not a problem.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It depends on you and I don't believe you should try to think it's a problem if you

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_01]: don't care because otherwise it will not make sense for you.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, people in Twitter keep saying me that I did a big mistake not investing but

[00:41:42] [SPEAKER_00]: if I started to invest I would start to check this stupid account every day or maybe even

[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_00]: every hour.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_00]: It will take a lot of resource and attention.

[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe better to invest this attention on another venture.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Definitely.

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I think like this is very funny because like everyone has always an opinion on everything

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_01]: but I believe we have always you know trade off we choose to not care about like

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_01]: for example some people care about ecology some don't.

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Some people care about having like cloth to made properly or made with

[00:42:23] [SPEAKER_01]: good material and some don't care.

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And I really like this book is like I forgot the name but it's like you have a limited amount of

[00:42:31] [SPEAKER_01]: give a fuck you can give and at one point you cannot on certain things and for you I think

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_01]: this is the same with this money you know you don't want to give a fuck about like

[00:42:41] [SPEAKER_01]: making it make more money every year you want to give a fuck more about like the project

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_01]: the things you're making your craft and other things that are more important for you.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And John as always the I got John like just before you and he was saying the same like

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_01]: he's very bad at making the money make money but he's very good at making project make money

[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_01]: and I think this is very fine this is maybe done for someone which is good at making

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_01]: money with money but maybe don't do things well like he's not doing his craft he's not

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_01]: like I don't know he's taking too much pain whatever you cannot do everything so it's

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_01]: pretty fine I believe if you are comfortable with your decision that's what should matter.

[00:43:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah money is money is always a problem if you don't have money it's a problem if you

[00:43:29] [SPEAKER_00]: have money it's a problem because they're growing in a way yes like you can't win

[00:43:37] [SPEAKER_00]: the only strategy I found to myself it just don't think about money money doesn't exist

[00:43:42] [SPEAKER_00]: it works so far yeah just earning more so I'm not dead starving.

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_01]: You know that's exactly what I want to reach I want to reach a point where I don't lose

[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_01]: zero percent of the time of how much money I have an account and it just worked this is my freedom

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be the slave of the money saying oh now I have X and I have to keep it I

[00:44:05] [SPEAKER_01]: just want something I know I don't have to care about because like he pissed me off money

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_01]: piss me off basically I prefer to not care about that.

[00:44:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Damn that's so stupid money is so useless you can't enjoy it you can buy love for it but

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_00]: it's so meaningful for a lot of people I don't know it just too too too hard to think about this.

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Funnily you know one thing that very annoying me about money is there are some businesses they

[00:44:37] [SPEAKER_01]: are just built to create money on top of money for example I have like people I know working in

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_01]: trading and trading is just about like you take an amount of money in the morning you put it

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_01]: somewhere and at the end of the day you have more or less and and I I cannot picture this for

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_01]: me it doesn't make sense I'm like you waste your day okay maybe you like to do this but I will never

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_01]: do that it's impossible for me I'm like what the fuck what did you create it today nothing

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah you managed to find a place where people were paying much there and so you move the money

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_01]: from there to there but okay I feel like you you could have played video game the whole

[00:45:21] [SPEAKER_00]: day will be the same for me you'll be as productive yeah it's like a video game for them but in reality

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess yeah definitely but that's so funny like I have spent very expensive time with

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a very close friend who is doing that as a job and and for me he looked like like a guy

[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_01]: from another galaxy I really love like he's passionate about and he told me taught me many

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_01]: things about why sometimes this is important to have these people doing these things for money but

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_01]: mostly I'm like I still don't get it after spending hours talking about it I'm like

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah I maybe I get it a bit but still not okay let's go back to my to my question I think least

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_01]: so definitely I do believe you don't really well like we both agree like we don't want to

[00:46:16] [SPEAKER_01]: care much about money but you still when you you sell your product you still think about pricing

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_01]: about like optimizing revenue and stuff like that or this is really a topic you don't care much and

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_00]: that work for you I don't have much revenue to optimize right now so I'm not thinking about

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_00]: for example in the previous platform for a purse I haven't tried to optimize it I don't even

[00:46:43] [SPEAKER_00]: raised the plans according to inflation was the same price and when you buy the the john

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_00]: or the new owner john he bumped the prices like three times and nothing bad happened he doubled the

[00:46:59] [SPEAKER_00]: mrr without doing much just by increasing the prices so I just had to increase the prices

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_00]: but I didn't have the balls to do that so if you want money you can definitely earn a lot

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah yeah I do agree that's very funny because like I am a bit the same as you I mean most of people

[00:47:23] [SPEAKER_01]: say you should raise price blah blah blah often but for example me for cap go I believe cap go should

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_01]: be a commodity cap go should be in every fucking capacitor up because it simplifies

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_01]: so much your process as a builder so my aim is not to have few clients who pay a lot my aim is to have

[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_01]: a whole capacitor community using it because it's super cheap and and it's required so like I'm doing

[00:47:50] [SPEAKER_01]: the reverse of what everything is doing like each time I find a solution to make my platform cheaper

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I do it you know I give more updates I give like I never lower the price but I give more for the

[00:48:06] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah welcome to the poor life this approach

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I found yeah yeah it can be poor but yeah let me show you a little discussion on

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_00]: github I found recently

[00:48:23] [SPEAKER_00]: it was from super base I was looking for free free credits of them and their founder said that

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_00]: they don't have free credits and we don't plan to

[00:48:40] [SPEAKER_00]: have cheaper plans their first plan is 25 bucks per month which is quite steep and they were asked

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_00]: to make a smaller plan of for example 10 dollars per month and their founder I tried trying to

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_00]: find that said that we don't want we don't want to yeah I can't find it but I remember it anyway

[00:49:06] [SPEAKER_00]: he said I want to add a smaller plan because I want to focus on the reach to become a rich company

[00:49:15] [SPEAKER_00]: so he focuses on corporate clients instead of focusing on indie makers which have no money

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_00]: obviously he was super transparent and honest about this huge respect but he lost a little bit of

[00:49:30] [SPEAKER_00]: empathy which we had towards him because we now know that he's about making money

[00:49:37] [SPEAKER_00]: which was quite obvious because he raised 80 millions on plan B and he's forced to earn money

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_00]: but anyway this is the way he thinks like the way of making money you are the complete entire

[00:49:52] [SPEAKER_00]: opposite you want to change the industry maybe you can imagine this line and somehow try to balance on

[00:50:03] [SPEAKER_01]: this yeah but for example I'm not going like many people have asked me to lower the enterprise

[00:50:09] [SPEAKER_01]: because my enterprise is 14 euro which is still expensive and I don't want to do that because

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I know when you go too low in price then you will have a lot of support and a lot of ask for

[00:50:21] [SPEAKER_01]: people so what I'm telling people is like Capcom is fully open source you don't want to pay 14 euro

[00:50:26] [SPEAKER_01]: a month then austere yourself it's a super base you have to pay 25 euro a month good luck with that

[00:50:35] [SPEAKER_01]: and so that's also like trying to build super simple solution for them if they don't want you

[00:50:42] [SPEAKER_01]: know you can have a super simple version of cap go which is just doing one thing serving one update

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_01]: for everyone the same because cap go has a lot of like possibility you can do channels you can go

[00:50:52] [SPEAKER_01]: like this device has this update these users for development team has this update blah blah

[00:50:58] [SPEAKER_01]: and so what I did is like I'm trying to try to guide people like if you cannot pay for this full

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_01]: solution build yourself like a tiny claudfer worker we sell just one new date it's super

[00:51:09] [SPEAKER_01]: easy to do you do it like that and you're good to go and you don't need to pay 14 euro months

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_01]: but you don't have all the features and I believe that's made kind of also cap go successful

[00:51:22] [SPEAKER_01]: because there are many people loving the product and cannot pay for example in India

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_01]: there are so many problems about the cdn I'm using claudfer and it's fucking broken in in India I

[00:51:32] [SPEAKER_01]: didn't knew about that and so in India they're just like yeah we cannot use your product right now

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_01]: so I'm trying to fix it but meanwhile they just fork it and austere themself and I really love

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_01]: this like they they support it sometimes like I have like 150 euro a month by a github support

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_01]: because they cannot pay so they support me that way and for me that that work I don't like them

[00:52:00] [SPEAKER_01]: to see business as a as a rogue system you don't have to be rogue like I believe like in the world

[00:52:07] [SPEAKER_01]: the one was most giving are the most the one who get the most back in return in day life it

[00:52:13] [SPEAKER_01]: doesn't mean in money but definitely in day life but yeah probably it's not a rich life you're right

[00:52:20] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah I'm trying to change my mindset and about this I was like you I was on the idealist I wanted to

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_00]: give more I was afraid to raise prices I was afraid to charge for extra but I wanted to shift myself

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_00]: from this mindset to more if people people pay for the goods I provide it's like a normal

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_00]: way to tell the world to you that your goods are demanded like you can't go to each of the users

[00:52:59] [SPEAKER_00]: of your application to every user of cup go knock on their door and say hey do you like it so

[00:53:07] [SPEAKER_00]: you find it useful they would say yes it was super useful thank you very much then you

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_00]: go to next door and you will spend your entire life instead you just put a check out and they send

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_00]: you money and it means they take some resources away from their life and sacrifice it to you

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_00]: in exchange for what you give to them because they believe that what you give to them is more

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_00]: valuable than 14 euros it's just a signal that what you do is loved and used you can make

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_00]: it entirely free but it won't really change anything because if people pay for this it's

[00:53:48] [SPEAKER_00]: already a fair price you know I'm trying to find this you know achieve this mindset so

[00:53:57] [SPEAKER_00]: that transaction is fine it's a way people say thank you like real thank you not just

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_00]: thank you for your smile mister but like you really helped me this is a part of resources

[00:54:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I take away from my family to you because like guy that was helpful thank you this is I want to

[00:54:17] [SPEAKER_01]: achieve more because it's okay yeah I do agree with you like charging is okay and I have very

[00:54:25] [SPEAKER_01]: like not much I mean I still have limitation on that for sure you have seen that but there are also

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_01]: things like I'm not like scared like for example my previous mobile app I raised the price like

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_01]: it was like one euro lifetime and he become like 20 euro a month a year as a mobile app and

[00:54:47] [SPEAKER_01]: he didn't change the conversion and many people got angry because they say oh I got the app like

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_01]: three years ago and I didn't need to pay and now I need to pay because I raised for everyone even

[00:54:57] [SPEAKER_01]: previous users and so that that has kind of vaccinated me because I saw like on I don't know

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_01]: 600 or 800 people paying I got like three or four saying like oh come on this is unfair we paid

[00:55:13] [SPEAKER_01]: three years ago one euro and I was like yeah maybe if the app had changed in three years for

[00:55:19] [SPEAKER_01]: one euro you could bet this is unfair for me but yeah I agree with that just I think for campgo

[00:55:26] [SPEAKER_01]: my vision is really I want like every app to use it like I want that become like a website hosting

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_01]: you know like it's super cheap because everyone use it and I want more more apps going into the

[00:55:39] [SPEAKER_01]: capacitor way because like right now for most of developers they think okay if I want to do a

[00:55:44] [SPEAKER_01]: mobile app I need to learn Swift I need to learn Android I need to do two mobile apps code

[00:55:50] [SPEAKER_01]: blah blah blah with capacitor you just take your app in react in whatever view angular what you like

[00:55:55] [SPEAKER_01]: you put it in a mobile app and you just use few features in plus because most of the app don't

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_01]: need really native features so I'm really pushing like for this to happen and I think more makers

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_01]: more people could build apps you see it's super simple it's like basically you have a website if

[00:56:15] [SPEAKER_01]: you can build build it statically you can build a mobile app with it it's like it's dead simple

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_01]: and that is something the guy from ionic build and it's amazing like there are many apps on

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_01]: the app store I think there are six thousand or eight thousand apps using that and sometimes

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_01]: you don't know like for example if you would like to go in vacation and to rent both one of the biggest

[00:56:42] [SPEAKER_01]: app for that it's named click and boat and it's capacitor up kick kick.com is a capacitor up

[00:56:48] [SPEAKER_01]: is the second bigger live stream platform in the world they are going to do native now because

[00:56:54] [SPEAKER_01]: they have start to have a bigger team and stuff but they started that way and there are many

[00:57:00] [SPEAKER_01]: many apps like that like Burger King in Australia is the app is capacitor so many apps when it's not

[00:57:07] [SPEAKER_01]: your main business maybe you could just do mobile like if you're not snapshot for example yeah

[00:57:14] [SPEAKER_00]: maybe you could just join their team and offer their help with creating plugins and

[00:57:19] [SPEAKER_00]: cap go what would be only one of them the capacitor team you mean yeah yeah I like it

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_01]: forgive me because they have also a business concurrent of mine and when I started to do this

[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_01]: business because they do it for the expensive world they do it for corporate super expensive

[00:57:43] [SPEAKER_01]: and I was complaining about that on github like everyone many many makers were complaining about

[00:57:49] [SPEAKER_01]: like we don't have a cheap way to do live update and they were like yeah we were just like

[00:57:54] [SPEAKER_01]: super based we just want to serve big corporate because this is good money each client is 2500

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_01]: minimum a month so it's super easy and now since the world company is built around this you cannot

[00:58:06] [SPEAKER_01]: serve tiny businesses it doesn't make sense like when you get 20 euros a month you're like

[00:58:10] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah how do I pay my sales with that how do I pay my customer success and everything

[00:58:16] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah so they say that they can't and I say to them like can I build it can I build it for

[00:58:21] [SPEAKER_01]: the makers and they say yeah of course so it's like amazing so I start building it

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_01]: publish it people got super happy about it at the beginning was even free because I couldn't do the

[00:58:33] [SPEAKER_01]: the stripe configuration in the beginning I just like cheap it like broken and do it yourself

[00:58:39] [SPEAKER_01]: but I just wanted to try if I could make it because it was complex to understand the thing

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_01]: and I made it and then they should saw me they saw I put pricing and everything and

[00:58:48] [SPEAKER_01]: they start to be like friend with me at the beginning was super nice and I asked them like

[00:58:53] [SPEAKER_01]: can we be more friend like maybe you recommend me for the makers and I recommend you for the

[00:58:58] [SPEAKER_01]: big corporate and we find an agreement they're like yeah for now you're just early so wait a

[00:59:04] [SPEAKER_01]: bit wait a bit and a year is past and I think they a bit forgot and I didn't you know I just

[00:59:10] [SPEAKER_01]: was talking with them Twitter and at one point I created an article a CEO article from another

[00:59:18] [SPEAKER_01]: maker and so I just like use charge EPT to rework his article change few things and publish it on my

[00:59:25] [SPEAKER_01]: blog and he was not from them he was from another person in the community and just after that

[00:59:32] [SPEAKER_01]: they send me a message hey we should talk I was like oh amazing they finally want to talk and

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_01]: find an agreement together they call me and they say you're a bad person you like doing

[00:59:43] [SPEAKER_01]: storing content where I credited the guy in the article I created the guy I said this article is

[00:59:49] [SPEAKER_01]: from Simon I just use charge EPT to rewrite it and change few things in it because I have a different

[00:59:54] [SPEAKER_01]: vision and yeah so they told me literally I was a bad person doing that and they bended me from

[01:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: everything like they discord they twitter and get up yeah I and I was the second person building the

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_01]: most of things in the platform and they bended me and since then there's still like some people in

[01:00:13] [SPEAKER_01]: company are angry about me some are friendly but until now I am banned so I cannot work with them

[01:00:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I would like to so unfair I will ask them to I think I understand because

[01:00:27] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah I couldn't be nice

[01:00:34] [SPEAKER_01]: but definitely the thing is they have a concurrent business and they feel I think

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_01]: threatened it by me and I was not like you know I'm not a person who asks permission so I've done

[01:00:45] [SPEAKER_01]: many things like I find the email of people in their Slack and I contacted people to not do

[01:00:51] [SPEAKER_01]: advertisement for my company but just to ask people if I can build three plugins for them

[01:00:55] [SPEAKER_01]: and then they will know me you know and so they didn't some people didn't like that because in my

[01:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: signature in the email it was like Martin from Cabo I don't even saw I put the signatures like by

[01:01:08] [SPEAKER_01]: default in Gmail and so yeah I made some people angry and then they were like yeah we have to ban

[01:01:15] [SPEAKER_01]: you I was like yeah maybe we should have talked before that you know I asked ask for instead

[01:01:21] [SPEAKER_01]: of just coming and like oh you're a bad person you're doing things you're not allowed I'm like yeah

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I've asked you before doing anything what is allowed and no one answered so I find my way okay that's

[01:01:34] [SPEAKER_01]: that's weird but yeah I mean at the beginning I was very angry from that because like I love

[01:01:43] [SPEAKER_01]: this company since many years like the first app I've built was with this thing

[01:01:48] [SPEAKER_01]: but I at one point I you're literally writing it right now

[01:02:00] [SPEAKER_01]: thanks I think at one point I understood they they protect their business the best they could

[01:02:08] [SPEAKER_01]: and sometimes this is not like perfect and doesn't make sense but definitely I have understanding

[01:02:16] [SPEAKER_01]: for them and at one point maybe they will um Cabo is with a C not a K just in case

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_00]: like what like this yes exactly yes because of mistake let me see if we if we care about

[01:02:41] [SPEAKER_01]: the community we have to reply let's see can just be curious about that yeah we'll see but

[01:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah so so right now I cannot work with them for this reason but I believe it's still at one point

[01:02:56] [SPEAKER_01]: they could buy my company because they could be like something useful for them that's also scary

[01:03:03] [SPEAKER_01]: like since they control the whole ecosystem they could do things against me but they are not doing

[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_01]: it at least because I think the developers of Capacitor I have support from them is just

[01:03:16] [SPEAKER_01]: the leaders I don't have support and don't like me but developers like me because I have

[01:03:20] [SPEAKER_01]: like I am the second biggest uh plug-in maker in in the world for them so I help them to make

[01:03:28] [SPEAKER_01]: the project more successful for free oh yeah that's um that story which is funny

[01:03:39] [SPEAKER_01]: for me but that was uh I think that that gave me motivation you know when I got banned I was like

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I will prove them they're wrong yeah and good work yeah coming back to you again because we talk a

[01:03:52] [SPEAKER_01]: bit about me what are you like do you have other things you want to build in the future you have in

[01:03:58] [SPEAKER_01]: your track list or these two projects are currently the main things you want to build

[01:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: you mean the internet projects or maybe your other project I don't know

[01:04:08] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah I want to build a village with John rush he has been talking about this on Twitter a lot

[01:04:17] [SPEAKER_01]: yes we plan to go to Portugal on the project too

[01:04:22] [SPEAKER_00]: um it's not official we just talked about this a lot we meet in person every year a couple of times

[01:04:32] [SPEAKER_00]: and I really want to build it and live like uh you know like our grand grand grandfathers lived

[01:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: in a small community making everything with your hands this is my main project and my dream

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: that's funny that you have to work a lot and earn a lot of money to live a life of a regular guy

[01:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: a few centuries ago that's weird anyway this is my main project I haven't started it yet but

[01:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: it's my goal for the next 10 years as for the internet things I'm also working on the acquire.com

[01:05:06] [SPEAKER_00]: competitor it's called acquire.website and oh okay I don't know if you see it you know for the village

[01:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I do the same by the way I have a land here in Madeira I'm building with three makers and we

[01:05:24] [SPEAKER_01]: start the process for it yes wow how many people do we had a talk about that with

[01:05:31] [SPEAKER_01]: with John and so right now the step we are is to we do the topography of the land because we have a

[01:05:38] [SPEAKER_01]: big land of 14 000 square meters and so we're doing the topography and the next step is to go

[01:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: with the architect to the city hall to propose the project and see if it's accepted or not

[01:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: so we're waiting for that topography to finish god cool that's amazing Madeira is beautiful

[01:05:56] [SPEAKER_01]: yes and I told John to come to visit Madeira because Madeira is such a nice place to

[01:06:03] [SPEAKER_01]: to build this kind of project since it's like kind of spring all year long so it's never cold

[01:06:09] [SPEAKER_01]: never too hot it's like very green so you're welcome to visit if you want to show you the land

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER_00]: wow cool do you have some kind of followers or I don't know who investors no so we are five

[01:06:24] [SPEAKER_01]: founders and two of them are crypto guys so they made a very good money in crypto and the project is

[01:06:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Naturopia the name and the idea is not about makers it's more in general we want to create

[01:06:39] [SPEAKER_01]: a community where people live in a way which is more close to nature so we don't want to have

[01:06:46] [SPEAKER_01]: like concrete building we want like natural ground building build naturally by hands and stuff like

[01:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: that so it will be mainly domes and so that will make us like not spending a lot in construction

[01:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: and make the construction pretty self-sustainable because the way we build will make it no need

[01:07:06] [SPEAKER_01]: to ac have a lot of natural light and stuff like that nice so yeah there should be neighbors

[01:07:15] [SPEAKER_01]: so we will just yes we have other land next to our land we can buy we are thinking to buy so if you

[01:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: want to buy another one I can send you the how much is that like millions or thousands

[01:07:29] [SPEAKER_01]: the lands the 14 000 we got it for 180 000 and 180 millions like five million no no not million

[01:07:39] [SPEAKER_01]: 180 000 you're 182 no that's not much quite affordable yeah i can buy it because it's

[01:07:50] [SPEAKER_01]: because the forest agriculture land so we need to build only like there are some limitation in

[01:07:58] [SPEAKER_01]: the land that's why it's cheap ah you can live there all year long no that's what we are

[01:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: doing with the camera like the camera is the name of city hall in portuguese so we have to negotiate

[01:08:12] [SPEAKER_01]: with the with the city hall what we want to build because it's not usual in portugal

[01:08:17] [SPEAKER_01]: to do natural building and stuff like that so we are trying to make it legalize

[01:08:21] [SPEAKER_01]: for the activity we want because right now in the land you can only do

[01:08:25] [SPEAKER_01]: short term tourism or agriculture but not live there fully so we are trying to find a path

[01:08:34] [SPEAKER_01]: to make it like livable and uh and this is a cobb house this is how your house feel like

[01:08:46] [SPEAKER_01]: supernatural yeah if you want to search the the the technique we want to use is to um the name

[01:08:52] [SPEAKER_01]: is super adobe super adobe is the main technique we're thinking to use and otherwise we are searching

[01:09:01] [SPEAKER_01]: wow yeah yes in a search this is nice yeah it's often a building desert you can find a lot in

[01:09:17] [SPEAKER_01]: marocco for example in mexico and so we went to mexico to learn the technique so we know

[01:09:22] [SPEAKER_01]: already how to build that or by yourself yeah and next month so we're going to the workshop

[01:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: to learn how to do her chip which is a different kind of house built out of the ground because we

[01:09:36] [SPEAKER_01]: need to know like what's the best for all lands so we need few different techniques

[01:09:41] [SPEAKER_01]: and we will also teach in our land people ought to build this kind of house by themselves

[01:09:46] [SPEAKER_01]: because it's pretty easy and doesn't take much money since you get the ground of your land

[01:09:52] [SPEAKER_01]: it's like uh you can build one for less than 20k super cool i want such thing that's funny like

[01:10:01] [SPEAKER_01]: we are very like i see more and more people having the same dream of like building a village for

[01:10:08] [SPEAKER_01]: themselves and not leaving the city anymore yeah that's fun yes it's a big trend yeah definitely

[01:10:17] [SPEAKER_01]: but it makes sense like we don't want to this life anymore

[01:10:22] [SPEAKER_01]: we slaves okay i have to i think we're gonna go we're gonna go to my finishing question

[01:10:29] [SPEAKER_01]: thanks for your time i really enjoyed this this podcast video i think that one question we did

[01:10:36] [SPEAKER_01]: we didn't cover yeah but you you talk a bit about the beginning is like why did you went

[01:10:41] [SPEAKER_01]: indie maker why you didn't raise money or didn't become an employee what was in you you

[01:10:46] [SPEAKER_00]: you say it was not for you but why because it adds a lot of complexity i tried to go to

[01:10:53] [SPEAKER_00]: portugal as a startup i applied the startup visa and i applied to accelerator and i was

[01:11:03] [SPEAKER_00]: accepted to one accelerator it's called demium it was like top one accelerator in lisbon and it

[01:11:14] [SPEAKER_00]: took me so much effort to just do the papers you have to fill in 1000 forms why do you want to build

[01:11:24] [SPEAKER_00]: this why do you want to build it in portugal how do you plan to hire 10 portuguese people i don't

[01:11:31] [SPEAKER_00]: have a plan to hire 10 portuguese people why don't know just let me build the thing and

[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_00]: how can i plan my startup for five years ahead if things are changing fast it's startup it's not

[01:11:46] [SPEAKER_00]: regular business and you have to i i spent 10 grand 10 000 euros to an agency which helped me with

[01:11:55] [SPEAKER_00]: these stupid papers it took us many months to fill in i had to have a lot of calls with them

[01:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: and negotiate a lot and it was just the first step after i arrived to

[01:12:10] [SPEAKER_00]: portugal if i would choose this vc way i would have to fill in 10 more papers i would have to

[01:12:18] [SPEAKER_00]: establish a company there papers bank accounts taxes income blah blah blah and then i would have

[01:12:28] [SPEAKER_00]: to raise more funds because accelerator invests in you not because you're cool but because they won't

[01:12:36] [SPEAKER_00]: return so i would have to do some kind of demo day and work on things that investors like

[01:12:46] [SPEAKER_00]: and i talk a lot about papers and investors but it's it's not related to users that's not fun

[01:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: i have a friend he went to the uc he raised 50 no he raised half a million

[01:13:02] [SPEAKER_00]: a few months ago and he has a full-time job of talking to his investor and

[01:13:10] [SPEAKER_00]: he had a lot of meetings and he now he had to find another investor to make this investor happy

[01:13:17] [SPEAKER_00]: and it's a full-time job i don't know how he manages to manage his team and do this

[01:13:24] [SPEAKER_00]: but i read that raising money is a full-time job it's an it's an entire job of going to meetings

[01:13:31] [SPEAKER_00]: talking negotiating making pitch deck dozens of pitch decks for different occasions

[01:13:40] [SPEAKER_00]: and for what like to what okay i would understand if i have to do something but if this something is

[01:13:49] [SPEAKER_00]: a decent goal but the goal of raising funds is to what to scale fast why do i need to scale fast

[01:13:57] [SPEAKER_00]: i can scale slow nothing would change um to what to raise capital to hire a huge team i don't

[01:14:05] [SPEAKER_00]: need a team i can go alone or hire maybe a couple of people it's i don't need vc for that to earn a

[01:14:13] [SPEAKER_00]: shit ton of cash but why do i need a shit ton of cash to do what to buy lamborghini not maybe if i

[01:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: was a was a fan of lamborghini i would do that but i'm not fun of the what what do we why do

[01:14:28] [SPEAKER_00]: i do this because everybody does that makes sense but yeah um that was never a way to be happy to do

[01:14:37] [SPEAKER_00]: what the crowd does so you have to think what you do so why i don't understand no one tells me if i

[01:14:44] [SPEAKER_00]: would be making some kind of high tech thing like ai and i would need a lot of capital to invest in

[01:14:51] [SPEAKER_00]: cpu's on gpu's that would make sense i would need millions or even billions i don't have

[01:14:57] [SPEAKER_00]: so such some but otherwise there is no need to raise money i believe it's a bad decision in most case

[01:15:06] [SPEAKER_01]: agree with you like if you have rnd like research and like you need like money to do this but if

[01:15:14] [SPEAKER_01]: it's just money to put in the advertisement and sales for me doesn't make much sense you you

[01:15:21] [SPEAKER_01]: trade your freedom for not a good result well it depends for like i believe like everyone has

[01:15:28] [SPEAKER_01]: his own tastes but definitely for me this is a very very bad decision i've done that in the past and

[01:15:34] [SPEAKER_01]: i've regretted oh really yeah i mean i don't know like when you start to have investors they start

[01:15:41] [SPEAKER_01]: to be to want you to make things and the first company i've joined i was a first developer

[01:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: and the investor where i keep asking stupid things to do and we were just pleasing them instead of

[01:15:55] [SPEAKER_01]: making things great for users and at one point i was like that doesn't make sense we have users

[01:15:59] [SPEAKER_01]: they are paying they're getting money they're things then we have an impact and then the vc

[01:16:05] [SPEAKER_01]: is asking us to do something in rivers because he wants money he wants to ten x is his money and

[01:16:12] [SPEAKER_00]: like yeah and you can't say no because this vc will go and say everybody that you're a bad guy

[01:16:19] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah you're you're out of your company basically and that has happened in many companies

[01:16:25] [SPEAKER_01]: you're in your company they out at you no no no i i outed myself

[01:16:37] [SPEAKER_01]: nice basically i knew like we were having you know when you get the first investor this is just

[01:16:43] [SPEAKER_01]: a loop of having more investment you cannot stop it's very hard so when we saw we were needing

[01:16:49] [SPEAKER_01]: more investment and i didn't want that i just okay i will get out myself and i will let you grow

[01:16:56] [SPEAKER_01]: the direction we have started because we cannot go back i don't want to crush the company

[01:17:01] [SPEAKER_00]: but yeah that was so we bought your your stocks or what were you just like no what i what i've done is

[01:17:10] [SPEAKER_01]: i left before we managed to raise again so the point was like if i buy my stocks now

[01:17:19] [SPEAKER_01]: back it will be a super bad signal for investors so the goal was like i've locked my stocks in

[01:17:26] [SPEAKER_01]: the company for a certain time i don't remember five years something like that and the idea is

[01:17:33] [SPEAKER_01]: they let they raise and everything and then i will be able to get out at one point not at the

[01:17:40] [SPEAKER_01]: new valuation because it was once it will be too big but at the previous one and they are okay

[01:17:47] [SPEAKER_01]: with that i'm okay with that it's like i really believe in them they should exist so i am not

[01:17:53] [SPEAKER_01]: like reaching to have the maximum value possible even if i created that at the beginning i just want

[01:17:59] [SPEAKER_01]: them to try and have a bit of something of it at the end so we'll see how things are going

[01:18:07] [SPEAKER_01]: nice good luck okay yes let's see what's the future he's saying now i would like to know if

[01:18:16] [SPEAKER_01]: you have a quote or something you'd like to repeat yourself often is not like very famous

[01:18:22] [SPEAKER_01]: quote for me i'm interesting in but something you really like as a mantra i would say more

[01:18:28] [SPEAKER_00]: i don't remember quotes if you if you make a tweet i will try to recall one and attach it to this

[01:18:36] [SPEAKER_00]: but i don't remember it's it's super hard to me to yeah yeah no problem like uh or or someone

[01:18:43] [SPEAKER_00]: asks me what's your favorite book or a movie and it just turns my brain into a brick yeah

[01:18:50] [SPEAKER_01]: but as an example for me i have things i repeat myself often like for example i really like to say

[01:18:57] [SPEAKER_01]: myself no no one is bad you know like i tell myself very often this like there are no bad people

[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_01]: there are no bad even people they are doing bad things they are not bad people because i really

[01:19:10] [SPEAKER_01]: want to shape my vision of the world as people are doing great and sometimes they do mistakes

[01:19:17] [SPEAKER_01]: for sure but people are trying to do the best always that's something i repeat myself you know it's

[01:19:22] [SPEAKER_01]: not really a quote it's something i really want to imprint because like i see so often like people

[01:19:29] [SPEAKER_01]: believe like oh there are people like there are stealers there are people bad and then you start

[01:19:33] [SPEAKER_01]: to be scary around you you know like your yeah and for me it takes a lot of energy to just be

[01:19:39] [SPEAKER_01]: scary about everything so i do want to believe in a world where it's like a little heaven and

[01:19:45] [SPEAKER_01]: everyone is like a nice person and that's the way i think that i do attract then good people

[01:19:53] [SPEAKER_01]: so yeah that's this kind of sentence if you have things like that that works as well it's not really

[01:19:58] [SPEAKER_01]: a quote it's more like believe you repeat yourself often yeah that's a great idea believing in good

[01:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: in people yeah i think the the good way of doing this is not taking people like someone

[01:20:12] [SPEAKER_00]: i see a lot of people on twitter when they reply they call people for example spammers like i write

[01:20:20] [SPEAKER_00]: i have a lot of dms with offers and people say ah those are spammers i was like those not not

[01:20:28] [SPEAKER_00]: spammers that's a guy who trying to sell right they're not doing spammers a bad thing if you

[01:20:34] [SPEAKER_00]: call someone a spammer or you call someone a bad person but those are not bad bad persons

[01:20:39] [SPEAKER_00]: they just try to push their things more than that's where our makers too just like you so you

[01:20:45] [SPEAKER_00]: have to understand this it's super obvious to you guy reaches out and tries to push your thing

[01:20:51] [SPEAKER_00]: it's not a spam maybe it's a spam but you don't have to call them spammers

[01:20:57] [SPEAKER_00]: i often reply to every spam i don't call it spam i called it called out rich and often

[01:21:03] [SPEAKER_00]: this call out rich is bad like weird people say bullshit marketing things and don't read it with my

[01:21:10] [SPEAKER_00]: name it just pitch i tell them sorry i'm not interested or i ask questions like why do you

[01:21:18] [SPEAKER_00]: want me to buy this and they start to think maybe we can have a conversation but yeah i don't like

[01:21:25] [SPEAKER_00]: them people say those are spammers those are people who trying to reach you and this

[01:21:30] [SPEAKER_00]: can be applied to everything those are not i don't know if someone is charging you more for

[01:21:38] [SPEAKER_00]: taxi you don't call them themes you call them people who trying to i don't know that's yeah

[01:21:46] [SPEAKER_01]: but you don't call them no but i agree i'm doing that in my relationship with close people but

[01:21:51] [SPEAKER_01]: definitely on internet should be the same like i've seen that with mark lately

[01:21:55] [SPEAKER_01]: we got called like so many bad names because he's just doing things he's just doing things and now

[01:22:02] [SPEAKER_01]: at the scale he's doing people get mad at him but yeah he's just grinding and he was grinding for

[01:22:08] [SPEAKER_01]: years and no one's care now everyone care because it's like no one make more money which is funny

[01:22:13] [SPEAKER_01]: but yeah i agree with you like not naming people and not defining people is a nice thing

[01:22:18] [SPEAKER_01]: super important with kids by the way to not you have kids they are like no but i'm thinking too

[01:22:28] [SPEAKER_01]: and i've read about that and this is like very important to to not tell them like for example

[01:22:34] [SPEAKER_01]: a very simple example is like don't tell them they're stupid or stuff like that and things

[01:22:39] [SPEAKER_01]: because then it will feel stupid but in many ways like it's it's something that shouldn't be

[01:22:47] [SPEAKER_01]: done okay um now a question for me is who i should invite after you in this podcast

[01:22:56] [SPEAKER_00]: i was hoping to say john rush since you had him yes um once again my brain turned into a brick

[01:23:03] [SPEAKER_01]: let me open the twitter i have um no problem your time i think i will invite john a second time

[01:23:10] [SPEAKER_01]: because like we spent two hours something talking and we were still having a lot of things to talk

[01:23:14] [SPEAKER_00]: about okay yeah he had yeah he can sit tight for hours and talk our longest talk with him was four

[01:23:26] [SPEAKER_00]: hours and 24 34 seconds four hour 34 minutes yeah almost five hours i wanted to go on actually

[01:23:36] [SPEAKER_00]: to see if there is an end but we had to say goodbye who i should invite oh maybe you can invite

[01:23:45] [SPEAKER_00]: then then the creator of shipixen what did you say you could invite then then the creator of shipixen

[01:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah no no no not hook of shipixen it's different one i forgot his surname one second please

[01:24:09] [SPEAKER_00]: it's so hard to navigate here then yes this bearded one here

[01:24:18] [SPEAKER_01]: the den with the bird oh yeah yeah oh yes uh i think and maybe it's plan but that's cool

[01:24:27] [SPEAKER_01]: i will i will vote his name i think we planned it

[01:24:33] [SPEAKER_00]: even yeah if you did it's great he's he runs a show so he's funny to talk and easy to talk

[01:24:40] [SPEAKER_01]: and you'd love to be here too okay thanks thanks a lot for that and last question is for you

[01:24:47] [SPEAKER_01]: where do we send the makers who are interested to know more about you twitter you can find me on

[01:24:57] [SPEAKER_00]: i also do youtube i forgot my name will be let oh yeah let me let me pitch my youtube i'm really

[01:25:05] [SPEAKER_00]: active there i make videos and it takes a lot of effort if you ever planned to do uh to start a youtube channel

[01:25:13] [SPEAKER_00]: try to think twice because it takes so much effort be sure to live an entire day for this

[01:25:22] [SPEAKER_00]: every week because it's so much time to make a one video i am this i'm doing it in the with the

[01:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: podcast but i will not do video as you do like it's super hard yes it's so much work it just looks

[01:25:37] [SPEAKER_00]: easy your record talk with a guy then you upload it bam you just have to think about the title

[01:25:43] [SPEAKER_00]: but there's so much work under the hood takes hours and hours endless hours okay so both link

[01:25:50] [SPEAKER_01]: will be on the description of the podcast if you're interesting guys uh you just need to go in the

[01:25:56] [SPEAKER_01]: description and click to get the youtube video of alexander or the twitter uh thanks a lot for

[01:26:04] [SPEAKER_01]: your time alexander um if the people who have listened us until now enjoyed i suggest you to

[01:26:11] [SPEAKER_01]: send us a message say thank you whatever uh to alexander or me it's always nice to see like

[01:26:16] [SPEAKER_01]: you've listened to leon and enjoyed the episode and um yeah i think that's that's it see you in

[01:26:23] [SPEAKER_00]: two yes merci beaucoup martin thank you for having me and if you listen to these guys please

[01:26:29] [SPEAKER_00]: spend five seconds of your precious time and go to the podcast platform where you are listening

[01:26:36] [SPEAKER_00]: to this and put five stars to martin because he is he is doing a colossal job for you um you

[01:26:42] [SPEAKER_00]: can't imagine how much effort it takes so please just put five and say thank you in the review i told

[01:26:49] [SPEAKER_00]: give a huge huge benefit to him thank you thanks thanks a lot for that i was doing like asking

[01:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: that in the french podcast but like 24 wrote in english one but you're you're right that's

[01:27:00] [SPEAKER_01]: very important and rate the podcast please guys thank you bye bye bye