The Bootstrapped Founder

This week, I made a choice, and it has a lot to do with focus and opportunity and, most of all, maybe money. To set the stage, let me share this voice mail I received earlier this week.

Harvit Mahoganyer. It's really interesting how you're using whisper. Cpp, and it's a great idea about, like, scanning every podcast everywhere and using that potentially as a add on service or just simply a marketing tool for Potmont. Fm. But you asked for feedback on, like, what do we think?

And I do think it would be a major deviation diluting your focus from the feature add on on pod line because it's it's a drastically different value proposition and offering, whereas you can funnel all of that energy and then essentialism sort of way, towards building out or fixing bugs or whatever for Podline, even though this other idea is great. So you wanted some feedback. Those are my initial thoughts, and it's only because of the whole, like, staying focused on your core product even though the other product is fun and interesting and even a a great value add for podcasters. Like, that data and having the ability to see what's going on real time is useful, but it's very different.

Yeah. It's super different. Thanks so much, Mahogany. I really appreciate it, and I love that Podline allows me to receive such feedback, but it has a problem, and this problem is me. As much as I love to tinker with technologies and of all kinds really, I want my SaaS experiments to result in a profitable business.

This isn't just supposed to be a fun activity. I want my work to ultimately create a long term asset for me and my family. Now Podline, my podcast voice mail product that you've just heard, has the potential to become a business. There are a few competitors out there and alternatives that people pay money for. But PodScan, my newest project, has shown overwhelming demand in comparison to Podline.

Not only are there tools in the wild that are used by 1,000 or 100 of 1,000 of marketers for similar purposes, but I've been bombarded already with messages of interest and willingness to pay with this product. And this has not happened for Podline yet, but it sure is happening now with PodScan. Because PodScan fits into a budget, because it's so much like things that people already pay for. It's a tool that people understand as a necessity, because similar things are already necessitated by the work they do. And that is why I'm chasing it.

Evidence of demand, A pull from the market, that's what I see. That's why I'm going into that direction. I don't intend to stick with an idea, because it was the first one that made sense to me. It is great that that was the first idea, but that is not enough. Readiness to pivot in the face of changing circumstances is a pretty important part of entrepreneurship, and it's not a very popular position too.

I got a lot of messages like the one from earlier that focused a lot on this lack of perceived consistency. Particularly, if you're building a public, you will occasionally get feedback like that. And I completely understand it. I've been having these thoughts for weeks now too. Like, this isn't new.

It's a pretty substantial internal struggle for me. I am asking myself the same questions. But I know that I am still relentlessly executing, even when I pivot my efforts a few months into a project. The sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy, and I am allowed to not fall for it. I'm allowed to stop sinking effort into a less promising project, when a more promising project also exists.

And that is my founder agency. And I feel I would be limiting myself if I considered myself or my project a failure, just because a better opportunity presented itself. Consistency for consistency's sake is folly, for almost anything you can do. And I need to be honest with myself here, just looking at my projects. Podline is a great product, but it is not yet a great business.

I think it's mostly feature complete as it does what it's supposed to do. Right? You can get voice mails. You can send voice mails. You can embedded wherever you need to.

If people wanted to really use it, they could. And it has seen some usage, but so far, no paying customers. But meanwhile, I'm getting really strong payment intense signals from professionals in businesses in my emails and DMs, on a daily basis for PodScan. So the path forward is really clear to me here. And so was the path that led me here.

I think I'm Mary Condo'ing Podline at this point. It sparked joy, and now it can rest. And I think it sparked more than joy really. PodScan would not exist without Podline. Both technologically, because I got into the Laravel world and the AI systems that I built for Podline were really, really useful to have built and understood for PodScan.

And in terms of market, Podline allowed me to freely explore and experience the space that I haven't operated in, podcasting, you know, and AI products. Now that I'm picking up the bread crumbs of visible demands that I see strewn all around me really. My game plan with PodScan is also much much clearer, which makes this pivot so much easier because I can understand how to easily market this particular product because I'm building a marketing tool. I can use it for my own marketing. One of the most validated use cases for having a podcast observation tool like this has been figuring out where my competitors advertise.

That's one of the things that a lot of people come to me for now. Like where are those people that I compete with and which podcast do they talk, or or like partner with the hosts, or where are they talked about, where can I also be talked about? That is what PodScan was built for. It's what it's predestined for. That's why I built this in the first place because I wanted to know where Podline's competitors are being talked about.

And I'm still using it for this too, like I am using PodScan for Podline marketing because I can. So just to figure out where people use tools for voicemail. I just earlier today got a notification from hot scan that looked into all podcasts that are released everywhere just for certain terms. And one of the terms that I look for there is SpeakPipe because SpeakPipe is a competitor for Podline. And I just earlier today learned that the Sarah Silverman podcast uses SpeakPipe.

And and now I know I can talk to this very established podcast by a very established comedian and see if they're interested in my Podland product. That is the feature that so many people wanna figure out. Where are their competitors talked about? And I'll just create alerts for the companies that I wanna market to, and I track mentions of themselves and their competitors. I send them a screenshot or make a screen cast and that that should create some interest even in the coldest of outreach cases, because it is very clear what the value of this is.

And one thing I realized as well is that most people aren't podcasters in my audience and in general, but in my network almost everyone has to market in some way. They have to bring something themselves, their product, their business, their books, their courses, whatever it is to market. And there is value in understanding that market better and knowing where people are. And the massive positive feedback from the community coupled with very clear use cases that I've already seen means that my positioning and my messaging will have so much more impact for PodScan than it could ever have had for Podline. So that's where I am right now.

I'm allowed to pivot and I'm not trapped. I get to choose what I work on and what signals I listen to. And this is still a very calculated decision. I wondered about switching things up a few times during building Podlin, but every single time there, I said no. At that point, the product that I was building right then with Podland was the best option around, but that has changed.

Now, I say yes to PodScan. And you'll see me talking about PodScan a lot more quite soon. I'm kind of slowly launching it, I think as this comes out the website will be up. If you if you wanna check it out, podscan.fm, that's where it's gonna live, that's where it's already living and already ingesting data. I think I just earlier today broke, what is it, like over 20,000 podcasts ingested and over 40,000 or 50,000 episodes.

I think it's it's 50,000 episodes and 40,000 of them I have transcribed over the last couple days. It's bizarre. It's like the technology of that is super fun and, just seeing it automatically, let's just chug along and get information in there is really, really enjoyable. But I'm gonna talk more about this. I'm gonna talk more about how I will, just, you know, market it, grow the business.

It is, complete in a sense that people can start using it. If you are a marketer, if you're somebody who wants to understand where certain keywords, certain phrases, certain themes are mentioned on podcasts, reach out to me. Send me a DM on Twitter, send me an email to arvid@podscan.fmorarvid@thebootsafounder.com or wherever you find my email. You just you find me and you send me a message, and I can get you onboarded as a beta tester. There's a trial, and, obviously, I'm gonna extend it for people who are helping me test in this very, very early stage and we can figure something out.

I just wanna see if this is a product that's useful for you and the early people that help me, they will get to see a massive benefit from this. I can promise you that. So that is where I'm right now. I'm very much enjoying my work and I'm gonna get right back to it. So that's it for today.

I will now briefly thank my sponsor acquire.com because in a way, selling a business is also a kind of pivot, and I kinda wanna talk about this today. If you were ever at a point where another path lays in front of you, it's not just continuing with the thing that you've done for years, but also just turning the value you created into something else, into into cash, into an asset that you can use in a different way, then you might actually wanna consider just selling your business or getting a business acquired. Because creating financial stability or even security, just a little step towards financial stability is a very, very important step in anybody's life, Any founder's life really. We build things that are risky, and at some point, you might wanna derisk it. And that's what an acquisition can do for you.

Because you you change. Right? That's I I talked a lot about change in in this episode today. Things change, opportunities change, challenges change, and we ourselves change over time. And maybe you're just done with the work.

Maybe you reached a skill ceiling, or you just want a different lifestyle. A lot of parents experienced this. Like a lot of people who are, getting kids late in life, they all of a sudden figure out, no, I don't wanna work like 60 hours a week on my business. I would rather take the value of that business now in cash, invested over the next couple years into a different lifestyle, and I can spend more time with my kids. That's an outcome that I see a lot of the time happening when people sell their business.

But no matter why you need to change, selling your business can be a very impactful and positive experience. And especially if you sell your SaaS on acquire.com, because the folks over there, they will help you make it a positive and impactful experience. They have helped thousands of people sell their valuable businesses for life changing amounts of money. You don't have to sell today by the way, but you just should take a look at it. Because if you're ever interested in pivoting into financial security, you probably wanna check out acquire.com.

So go to try. Acquire.com/arbit, and and see if this is for you and your business right now. And if it's not, check it out anyway, because it's always good to plan ahead. These moments are pivotal, quite literally, and I I know I'm making wordplay here. It's intentional.

I kinda like it, but the the act of selling a business has been probably the most mind blowing upgrade of my life. Like, I'm literally sitting in the house that selling this business bought. I'm all all I do is build on that exit, really. So if that is something you might wanna see in your future, Acquire will take you there, and they will help you get to that point. Thank you for listening really today.

I'm I'm so excited to talk about these things. I could barely find words. You can find me on Twitter at arvidkhalaravidkhl, and you'll find my books on my Twitter course there too. If you wanna support me and this show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Get the podcast, your podcast player of choice, and leave a 5 star rating and a great review by going to rate this podcast.com/founder.

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