333: Kitze — Juggling Projects, ADHD, and the Indie Hacker Lifestyle
Download MP3That was me with all the other products. I'm like, I launched it.
Kitze:Where's the where's the $1, 000, 000, 000? Like, what is wrong with people?
Arvid:I'm Arvid Kahl and you're listening to the Bootstrap founder. Today, I'm talking to serial indie hacker and entrepreneur, Kitze. He is building a lot of stuff. Between Sizzy, the browser for devs, and Benji, a productivity app, a full stack video course, and being on Twitter all day, he also has a podcast called The KitsaCast that I listen to all the time. Oh, and he has a newsletter too.
Arvid:Now, is this an intentional portfolio of small bets or is his life just chaotic switching from 1 thing to another trying to keep them all in the air at the same time? You'll find out today. Man, it is really nice to finally be able to talk to you. I've been trying to get you on the show for a while. And, yeah.
Arvid:I I we just wanna know, how's life?
Kitze:Chaotic. Chaotic, I would say.
Arvid:It's so symptomatic of the the indie hacker life. Right? I'm just thinking about all the things that you have going on, and I listen to your podcast a lot. You have, like, Sizzy. You have the this kind of browser for developers.
Arvid:You have Benjie, which is like this LIFO as productivity tool that is super cool. I'm really I'm really looking forward to to talk to you about this. And then you have this course that you got, and you have a newsletter, and you have a podcast, and you try to, you know, keep your life together and still have a family life. Like, how do you manage this? This is crazy, man.
Kitze:With a lot of glue and the sides are just falling apart and all the things are just it's it's chaotic, but, like, the main mission of me building Benjie is to be more organized and to be able to do so many things in parallel. Like, I've tried all the other tools and apps, and I'm like, none of this cuts it. I need an entire OS built around my forgetfulness and my you know? And even with Benjie, like, I missed the event for for this particular podcast. So it's not an ideal solution, but I'm working towards building something catered and tailored for for myself.
Kitze:And then if it works for other people, great. That's that's the idea.
Arvid:That's that's the perfect way of building software as a as a small indie founder. Right? You know exactly what the problem is because you feel it yourself.
Kitze:Yeah.
Arvid:And every time it doesn't work, you can improve it. So it's gonna work better the next time and for other people as well. That's that's what this might launch into. Right? You didn't get the notification, so now you're probably gonna rethink, well, how can I get it even better?
Arvid:Right? How can I push it more strongly? Yeah. It's interesting that you say this. Like, that's it's it's kinda dogfooding your own tool here because I've been following you for years at this point on Twitter, and I see you, like, really integrating your own experiences into this product and integrating your own kind of personality into this product, making it available for other people with similarly chaotic lifestyles and all that.
Arvid:You just said on 1 of the recent episodes of your podcast that you have this kind of ADHD brain, right, where you really need to need to focus on a thing. Yep. And if not, if you get distracted, everything just explodes. Is that 1 of the reasons that you built this in the first place too?
Kitze:Yeah. 100%. You just cannot call it the tool for ADHD because then the mob comes after you. And even if you have it like, I've been diagnosed with it recently. I went to a therapist, and they're like, yep.
Kitze:You got this. You know? Like, you have ADHD. If you try to put it in the tagline of the product and people will come at you like, no. You don't really know know how it is.
Kitze:And, like, there is always a scale and there's severity of it, and I think my severity is, like, manageable, I would say. But I definitely need, like, a specialized tool to help me with, like, tasks, habits, routines, and planning and and wiring, like, everything together.
Arvid:How do you avoid being too complicated when it comes to a tool like this? Right? Because I I look at Benjie, I look at the screenshots, and it it looks very clean. You have a good design mind. I really liked it about your work, both on the product and the marketing side.
Arvid:But clean and functional are not necessarily the same. Right? So how do you keep that in check with a tool like this?
Kitze:Yeah. It is it's hard, and I wish I had more time to just stop making new features and new improvements and just sit down and think about UX. Because we've done that about Sysi, because we you know, anytime every week we have a meeting and we decide, okay. Let's just add new functionality. And there's always the question, where do we shove the button?
Kitze:Like, it's not even putting the button. It's shoving the button at a point where but it looks like a Windows Vista toolbar, you know, with all the things. And we we got to a point, like, we see the screenshots of Sizzi. We see, like, 3 toolbars, all of them with different pop so we had to, like, pause for a month and console designers to, like, remove, remove, remove, to clean up. And now, like, we even counted.
Kitze:It has less buttons than Google Chrome. So if you want, you can pull out some functionality and put it, you know, in front of you. But by default, everything is hidden and nicely organized. I wish I had time to do that for Benjie. Until now, it's been, like, almost 2 years at this point just building on top of building new things and new features and stuff.
Kitze:So it's it's a tricky thing to balance. Like, if you if I was only making a to do app, it would be easy because it's only a to do app. But now you have a sidebar to navigate to, like, 20 different functionalities. And when you open, like, a certain 1 like food tracking, it has its own sidebar and filters and views. And I've never did like, I'm not a designer.
Kitze:I've never worked on a tool this complex. So it's, it's it's tricky, I would say. I don't have any advice here. It's just like maybe I'll take some complaint from a user and be like, okay. Couple of people have complained about this.
Kitze:Maybe I should iron this out and make it simpler.
Arvid:So it's it's all kinda when when a problem happens, when when something appears, you work on it. Is is that the the mode that this this goes into?
Kitze:Not always because you have, like, so many voices. Like, you have people who are not paying and you have paid customers and you have people who I call believers who paid for the product when it was in an early stage. Then you have my own problems in my life. Like, my wife would come in home and be like, the freaking grocers things didn't work again, and I tried to add carrots and the thing. Because I'll ask her like, hey.
Kitze:Did you get, let's say, coconut milk? And she'll be like, no. Because the tool didn't they're on refresh. And I'm like Yeah. Ultimately, now whatever happens in this family, it comes to me and this tool, like something not working in this tool.
Arvid:Oh, that's that's so funny. It it sounds it sounds funny, but I think it it probably is psychologically very taxing on you.
Kitze:It is. Right?
Arvid:Like, you kinda this intermixture of family life and and the professional thing?
Kitze:Yeah. Because now it's like, on top of everything going on, I have to fix the bugs in
Arvid:my own
Kitze:tool because they're at fault for something going wrong in my life. Like, we miss like, 1 time I run ran a database query because, like, my planner, the calendar seemed kinda slow for me. And I was like, okay. Screw it. I'm just gonna run a query and delete all the events on my planner because I don't care about the past events and whatever.
Kitze:I didn't think that the query will also delete future events, which had, like, my baby's vaccination and a bunch of other things. You know? So it could have I mean, we still did it on time, but it could have serious consequences. And the more users it gets, the more it grows. I'm trying to treat it more professionally, so not doing any crazy SQL exhibitions and stuff.
Arvid:It's interesting that that's the side effects of of a business that is so entwined with your personal life that, obviously, they they can damage the things that happen in your non work time as well. I think that's that's important because most of us, indie hackers, we build stuff that we wanna use ourselves because we are, I guess, not our best customers, but our our best feedback giving customers. Right? We understand, like, problems and stuff, and particularly with partners and wives and children. I mean, the the first business that I built, the the FeedbackPanda back in the day, was for my my partner.
Arvid:Like, she was my first customer, and people like her were then the customer of the business that my partner and I ran together. So there is a lot of mixing things. Right? III do wonder, is your family involved in the business for you other than being constantly mentioned on Twitter and in the podcast?
Kitze:My wife was working full well, she was working part time for a while for Sizzi, and then she quit the company. She was working for Amazon, and she quit Amazon to, like, help me full time because I was juggling like, only we had only Sizzi as a product, and it's not only coding on the product. It's, like, replying to customers and testing, and it's a browser which works on Linux, Windows, and Mac. So you gotta test every scenario on on every OS. And so she helped with customer support.
Kitze:She helped with testing. She helped with writing the help center, writing change logs. We we had to build entire flows for everything. Like, when we move a card, once we finish a feature, like, it has to go through an entire path of, like, putting it in the change log, making sure to notify all the users who requested it. And, like, we were doing this for a while, and that's how I started on this chaotic path.
Kitze:So, basically, back in the day, a client requests me to do responsive design, and I create a fork in my life. And I'm like, I don't wanna resize my browser in Google Chrome. I need to build a browser. So I start building going on that path. Let's say 6, 7 months later, we're building a browser, and we're using Trello for the road map, Canny for the issues, something third for customers.
Kitze:So, like, we're using so many things. And I'm like, what if we make a product and it's like it has all of these in 1? So I I make a little fork in Sizzie and I make Glink, which nothing has come out of it because I haven't devoted much time to it, but we still use it. Like, I use it to document all of my products. And I go on that for probably for, like, a year, and I'm putting more effort in Gling than I'm putting in in Sizzee.
Kitze:But it's still the same pattern of, like, you know, I have an issue and now, okay, Sizzi is kinda solved. And now I need to solve the feedback loop of, like, how do we go from customer request something to we decide what to build because so many customers, like, tell you what you need to build, to us building it and making sure that everyone is notified. So, I still think, like, if I could clone myself and work on Gleng full time, I think if I put more energy in it, it might have more outcome on the money on my other products than me actually working on the products at this point because they're undocumented, and there's not enough marketing going on. Like, sometimes I can work for 2 weeks on Benjie, and I don't even say a word anywhere. You know?
Kitze:I'm lazy to write the change log and whatever. I forgot to notify the customer. And I'm like, if I was doing the other things, like documenting help center change log, and other stuff, like, it might have a bigger effect than actually just working on features, features, features.
Arvid:That that's an interesting 1. And I think you you said something on a recent podcast as well. Like, we, developers, we do marketing week and stuff like this, but it's still developer week because we do marketing stuff with coding. Right?
Kitze:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to divide my weeks in the last few weeks to have a theme, like administrative day, product coding day, marketing day. And I've been respecting it.
Kitze:The only problem is, well, like, when marketing day rolls around, I'm like, yeah. But what does it mean? Coding on the landing page is marketing. Right? So I I still try to
Arvid:Yeah. That's funny. And and it's probably extra hard with multiple projects like this. Because what does marketing day mean if you have 3 or 4 different projects and 1 needs marketing more than the others, but they all need marketing? Like, you only have so much time.
Arvid:Right?
Kitze:Yeah. It's like, I don't like, I'm seeking an advice here. Like, how do people do this? How do they juggle it? If you don't have right now, like, they're all bootstrapped.
Kitze:And I've had employees in the past. I had full time employees. I had contractors and everything. Let's say you don't wanna hire anyone right now. How the hell do you juggle?
Kitze:Because you have, like, marketing day, but for 4 products. And then you have, like, product day for 4 products. And then, like, there's so many branches that a lot of times I'll just feel stuck and just work on whatever. Feels fun.
Arvid:Yeah. I I guess that's that's the way out. Right? The way out is leaning into what you have energy for on on any given day. Yeah.
Arvid:Which probably, gets gets smaller and smaller the more projects you have. Right? So have you ever considered, like, trimming the projects, or are they so, like, entwined? Again, here's the word again. Right?
Arvid:That that you can't really pull them out. Like, my my question is, have you ever thought of taking 1 and just selling it or or just stopping working on it? Has this ever crossed your mind?
Kitze:It has crossed my mind to sell Sizzee, to be honest, even though it's my baby. Like, it it turns 5 years in in 2 days, and it's, like, let's say, my main product. And if you leave me to just work on on, like, the vision for which features it could have and ignore, like like, leave everything else to someone else, let's say hire a CEO, I have a 1, 000, 000, 000 ideas of what could be built into a browser for developers, and that's the only scary thought for why I don't wanna sell it. Like, are they gonna shove ads into it? Are they gonna put NFTs and crypto gambling?
Kitze:God knows what. So I I'm considering it, and I even put it on acquire.com. I haven't finalized the process until we got to some price and stuff, and I'm like, I didn't work for 5 freaking years to sell it for this much. Like, it's I'm either gonna sell it for, like, at least a1000000 or I'm not gonna I'm I'm I'm gonna keep it.
Arvid:That's a question that I always had when I've been listening to your story and stuff. What is your, yes, I'm gonna sell this number. Right? Because for I have a number for this too, that just means, like, I can buy, I don't know, a bigger house or whatever or never have to work again, that kind of stuff. What is that number for you?
Arvid:Like, where do you wanna go with with your project? Do you even wanna go there? Maybe that's also part of this. Do you wanna build businesses to sell to then be able to get there, or do you just wanna keep building?
Kitze:It's a it's a very, very good and tricky question because I would sell Citi if I keep some, like, position in the company where I can still navigate the vision a little bit. And I I have the power to not allow for something to be built or not allow to go in a certain direction because I'll still have ideas. Because I'm using Sysdaily to build Benchy, and then I use Glink to document both of them. And it's like, you know, if I decide, okay. Screw it.
Kitze:I'm gonna use Canny or whatever. Now I don't have the 100% power. When I get, like, an idea, oh, what if we integrate not change logs, but changes and I put in widget, I have to text their customer support, and maybe in 2 years, they're gonna build the feature. And this way, I can roll up my sleeves. And in a weekend, I can be like, okay.
Kitze:I have this. So even when I say I would sell Cece for a million, if someone comes to me with a million, I'm still not sure if I would just go immediately, oh, yeah. Let's do it. Because you you ask me if I'm building them to sell them. Definitely not.
Kitze:Like, I'm I'm I'm building Sizzi to so I'm able to build my other products faster. And then I would never sell Benjie to anyone because it's like literally my morning to night depends. Like, the entire day depends on on that product. So very, very tricky question.
Arvid:It's a it's an interesting situation that you're in, like, with with all these tools as they are so deeply integrated into your life, and then you use them to build the other tools, there's a risk for you to to just hand them over to somebody. I mean, if if somebody give says, like, here's $10, 000, 000, I wanna buy all your products. I mean, you you know, I get in a moment like this. Right?
Kitze:Then you're like, why would I need a to do list manager to have this app?
Arvid:Like, you know, I
Kitze:can do whatever the fuck I want all day.
Arvid:Exactly right. And that's what I think. That's where that number is so important for us as as founders. Right? Like, even just as a as a horizon, a mental horizon to understand, I do this to make money and I do this because I love it and I do this because that's the best way for me to work.
Arvid:I'm I feel most fulfilled and all of these things. But in the end, we all create things to build some kind of wealth. Right? Mental wealth and financial wealth and family wealth and all these kinds of wealth. So what is the wealth that the faster path, like, either building this for another 10 years and seeing where this goes or taking those $10, 000, 000 now investing them smartly?
Arvid:And, you know, that's that's always a calculation that founders have to do. And I I found an it's just an interesting thing to think about because it kinda shows you what you really need. Right? For you, it's you need structure in your day, and the tool facilitates that. Yeah.
Arvid:And if you give away the tool and somebody puts, like, some bullshit NFT stuff in there, then your whole day is ruined and and the future of everybody, like, that uses the tool as well. So there is there's this kind of connection here too. I find that very interesting. You seem to be very connected to your your products. Do you think that's problematic?
Arvid:Do you think that's risky?
Kitze:It is. It is both problematic, and it is risky, I would say. Because I keep telling people, like, Benjie's gonna be around forever. No worries. Until someone throws 10, 000, 000, and then I don't have the need for routines task.
Kitze:Like, I can wake up whenever I want. I can spend my day. You know, I've been thinking about this, like, philosophically. I've been talking with my wife. I'm like, do rich people, like, super crazy rich people, when they go on a trip, they still need a list in order to pack.
Kitze:So 1 of the features in Benjie is, like, you can plan trips, and for each trip, you can decide which activities you're doing on the trip. And for each activity, you have a packing list. And I'm like, like, maybe Beyonce doesn't need this, but few notches down be below her, you know, any regular average millionaire Joe still needs a packing list when they go somewhere. So I would still I would give up some of the features in my tool, but I would still want some features to be around. But I don't know.
Kitze:For 10, 000, 000, I would just install a random packing list app from from the Play Store and
Arvid:screw it. Oh 0, you go, like, the Basecamp way and you you make it a an installable, like a self self serve installable platform in the end. Right? Like, turn the the way they they turned their their Campfire product into the something you can just install by yourself and maintain yourself. Like, that that could always be an option.
Arvid:Local first, I guess, is the is the phrase for this. So, yeah, it's it's very, very interesting point. I think the the most rich people, they have people packing for them. They just like, 2 days before they travel, they they prep they pack up their whole house and move all of that. But, yeah, that's probably not the the future that you're gonna be in selling this or most of your customers.
Arvid:Right? That's just such a such an outlier perspective. But interesting. I I really like this. And I love that you think about your needs, like your future needs in anticipation of this.
Arvid:This is really cool because a lot of people build software to sell it, and I think that's perfectly fine if that's your the way you wanna do it. But it doesn't sound like you are. What I wonder is, like, do you have, like, a ceiling of how many products you wanna build at the same time? Do you think you're already there, or are you gonna find another thing that you're gonna be building in the future?
Kitze:I think I think I'm there. Unless something is, like, really core to my particular needs, then I don't want it as a business. Like, I have an app called Comeback Later, which I'm relying on for browsing Twitter. It lets me browse Twitter 5 minutes every hour. And I made it like a desktop app, and I browse for 5 minutes.
Kitze:It locks. It tells me come back later in an hour. And I've posted screenshots a couple of times, and people are like, oh, cool. Where can I get this? Buy this, whatever.
Kitze:So I just went on a tangent for, like, a day, and I built it properly, integrated lemon squeezy licenses and everything. And then I realized, oh, shit. It's an electron app, and you need to distribute an electron app. And that's, like, the most giant pain in the ass I've gone through in my life. Yep.
Kitze:And I just refunded all the customers who bought it literally. I had to make the decision. Like, do I wanna go down this rabbit hole, or do I wanna just refund the people and not make money? So I was like, nope. I don't need another sellable product.
Kitze:I'm gonna keep it an app for myself. And I I think I'm learning this when I go on my golden retriever ADHD brain, you know, pursuing an idea. I'm like, this is not that crucial for myself right now, and I need to maintain it for other people. So let's just keep it as not even a side project, like a my project, I would call it. Like a non monetizable my project.
Arvid:Oh, I love that. Yeah. It it it sounds like you're pretty, strict about how many people are involved in these things. Right? It sounds like it's all you.
Arvid:And maybe some family, but you don't really hire anybody to take care of these tools. Because there there are a lot of founders out there that that kind of stepped up a little bit, and they are like, okay. I have the idea. I built the prototype, and then I hire, like, 3 or 4 people, and they deal with this while I just make money and talk about it on Twitter. I'm not gonna name anybody, but you know who the these people are.
Arvid:Right? It's it's just that that is just a method for them to build businesses. And I guess it's a normal way of building businesses. Like, you have an idea and you hire people to do it.
Kitze:Yeah.
Arvid:So why not? Because I'm I'm the same way as you. I don't do this. Like, I just wanna build this and nobody else gets to play with it. This is my stuff.
Arvid:Is why is that for you? Like, why don't you hire?
Kitze:The the name of the show is perfect for this story. Like, when I launched CZ, literally every investor on earth was interested in, like, let's get in on it. Let's do partnership, whatever. Let's invest. And usually, I would reject them, but it took, like, a few calls.
Kitze:And I remember 1 of my calls, it was I was, in an apartment in a very boiling room. Even though in Poland, it's, like, 25 degrees, the room got, like, 30 something, 35 degrees inside. And I'm taking this late meeting, and it's after my working hours, and I'm boiling and sweating and whatever. And I have a call with this investor who is late, and she was late. And then she shows up with a towel around her head, and she was, sorry.
Kitze:Just came back from the pool at the hood. And I'm like, fuck off. I'm not gonna boil in this goddamn room while you're chilling at hotels and just I I give you a presentation with all my metrics if things are going your way. So I got put off by that energy, you know, of I know not every investor is like that. And maybe in the future, I'm open to some partnership which are more, I don't know how to call them, human like.
Kitze:You know? Like, maybe some more logical thing than, like, classic VC. But that's mainly the reason why I don't like, I don't want anyone having control telling me how many hours to work and what which features to build and
Arvid:Yep. That's that's kind of what I always consider to be alignment, like founder investor alignment. Like you wanna you wanna walk in the same direction. And if you have somebody who wants you to be like 1 out of a 100 businesses that maybe succeeds, like, you're not in the walking in the same direction at all. You're, like, you're walking where you wanna go, and they just they don't care.
Arvid:They just want you to walk somewhere and maybe go in a good place. Yeah. I think that's that's what VC generally does. I mean, I got funding for PodScan from the the Comm Company Fund, right, which is, like, very bootstrapper focused. Like, all of the investors in the Com Fund are bootstrappers, like, which is great.
Arvid:I I myself am invested in the fund, which makes it pretty weird that I'm investing in my own product through a fund, but, you know, forget about that. But it's it's, it's money that doesn't come with strings attached. Like, they literally they if I ever raise more money, they get a small percentage. And if I make if I make some profit beyond, I don't know, 6 figures a year, then they get a percentage of that profit over that. That's all that money is.
Arvid:It was just some kind of revenue share or an earnings share. So to me, that was like, okay. We are aligned here. Also, it's Tyler Tringus. Right?
Arvid:The the guy that that runs the fund, and he's a boot shopper himself. He sold his business to the same company we sold our business to, and I've had a podcast with him for a couple months. So, like, it's that is the human side of it. That's what I'm trying to say. Right?
Arvid:So it's I would never take money from people who just have money because that is, like, super dangerous. But I I will take help from people that I like. That's very, very simple. So it's it's and it's the same with people, who who I hire. Because I also I have no employees, same as you probably.
Arvid:But every now and then, some freelancer stops being a freelancer and becomes kind of a partner in a project. Right? It's somebody you you know, okay. They understand what I'm doing here, and I I can give them this task, and they're gonna be fast, they're gonna be good, and they're gonna produce something that I could really use. That's that's how I I work with it's people stuff.
Kitze:Right? That's really
Arvid:what it is.
Kitze:People stuff is hard. I don't, like,
Jessica:I I
Kitze:don't know how are you with people stuff, but I've been I've been horrible with managing people. And I had full time employees at some point. We were probably I had 2 or 3 full time employees at the same time. And for me, it was horrible to juggle. Even though they had they were doing their responsibility, like, my responsibilities didn't diminish.
Kitze:They just changed. So instead of coding and doing whatever, I had to manage this employee or just tell them like, I realized, like, 1 strategy that I've tried, which I thought I would want this strategy applied to me, but it seems that people don't like that. I just gave people freedom, like, really crazy freedom and crazy trust. You know? But it turns out after a while, they just burn out, and they're like, no.
Kitze:I want you to tell me I mean, not everyone is the same, but the people I work with were like, no. I I need guidance. I need people around me, and I want to be told, like, what to do. And did I go to did I do a good job? And, like, they wanted me to be more involved, and I'm horrible at that.
Kitze:I'm like, we have a giant list of tasks. We have a vague plan of where we wanna go. Pick up what you wanna do. It takes you however long it takes you. I don't wanna do points and micro like, we tried all the strategies, doing micro endpoints and doing nothing, but it seems like nothing has worked.
Kitze:And I can improve in this area. I just don't want to. It might sound childish. You know? It sounds childish.
Kitze:I'm like, I I don't wanna learn about managing, and I don't wanna learn about this.
Arvid:I feel the same way whenever I I and I I try to solve all my problems with books. That's like my approach. If I have a problem that I don't know how to deal with, I I go to YouTube first and then I try to find a good book recommendation. And then whenever I open up a management book, I just fall asleep immediately. Like, it's just I I just cannot read these books even though they're great, and I know they're super impactful and they're probably extremely helpful.
Arvid:I just like, okay. So now I need to do what kind of meeting? Yeah.
Kitze:Yeah. Yeah.
Arvid:But that's the founder. Right? That's the founder founder mentality. That's this kind of we need the freedom. It's funny because you've been talking about you need structure in your life because that's what Benjie is all about.
Arvid:But that that's like short term structure. Right? You don't need long term structure. You don't need the career path. But isn't it funny how you need structure in 1 way, but you you crave complete freedom in another way?
Kitze:I mean, even in the short term, I've been battling with my schedules. Like, I would make the schedule for the week. And today, I made the schedule for the day, and I'm like, okay. This is what I'm gonna do. Then, like, 35 minutes after me making that schedule.
Kitze:I'm like, I feel like working out now. So I I wanna explore with Benjie, is there something more beyond those calendar lines and grids that everyone uses? You know? I wanna because I'm using a calendar library right now, which gives you, like, a standard Google Calendar layout. I'm like, what if I invent, like, my own Canvas?
Kitze:I still don't know how it's gonna look, but it doesn't have the classic, you know, lines with times and whatever. But maybe it has just, like, a vague plan of your day or week that you zoom in and out. Because I've been battling with calendars and lines forever, just trying to make it work and trying to make that plan down to, like, 15 minutes. And then sometimes you might need to go to the toilet for longer. You know?
Kitze:And then everything you schedule, like, down with every block, like, falls apart because of 1 thing. Like, someone rang the bell or whatever.
Arvid:That is that makes absolute sense. And and I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but an an image that just came to my mind was that of a lava lamp. Mhmm. You know, these cool things from the nineties where stuff just, like, slowly moves up and down where everything is everything is pushing onto the other things, but everything has a fit place in in a structure that when you just described this, how 1 thing affects the other, that that came to mind. Doesn't have to make it into the product, but I'm just thinking about, like, how can you visualize something fluid that is also kind of viscous.
Arvid:Right? That is also kind of static. That that is, I think, the the holy grail of all time and productivity management tooling is to visualize things that are supposed to be 1 way and then reality happens. Right? That that feels feels complicated.
Arvid:Do you often talk to your customers about this? Like, do you do you reach out to them and say, hey. Does it make sense? Or do you just push it out and see what comes back?
Kitze:Usually, I'm going with pushing out and see what's comes back. It's like kid said problem driven development, I would call it. Like, we've tried so many frameworks of prioritizing customer feedback, like so many frameworks with points and for how long are they paying and whatever. It's, like, so freaking hard. And you know that midweek meme?
Kitze:It's like, first, you just roll with the flow and you follow your guts, and then you go like, let's complicate it with all the thing, and then you just go go with your guts and people are like, oh, cool. I kinda like this. Someone will get mad every once in a while and be like, hey. I reported a bug year and a half ago, and no 1, you know, came around to it and whatever. But it's it is what it is.
Kitze:You cannot satisfy everyone at the same time. It's like it is hard.
Arvid:Yeah. Priorities like, managing priorities, even understanding what needs to be prioritized feels to be 1 of the most elusively complicated things of entrepreneurship. Right? Yes. It's it's because it's internal for us too.
Arvid:Like, I I think if you just work a job as a product manager, you have somebody telling you what to do and you can then tell other people what to do, you're kind of a conduit. You you you're kind of passing along stuff, and you're you can put your best efforts into it, and you can make it really effective. I'm not gonna diss anybody here. I think it's an important job. But if you are both your boss and your product manager and the person who then has to implement it, right, the the Fuck my life.
Arvid:Yeah. And and that's just 1 of the verticals that you're in. Right? Then there's also product building, and then there's marketing, and then there's all these things. Yeah.
Arvid:That's that's hard. I I guess I I love that you found a way to make money solving this problem for yourself. I think this is really cool. I think with with Benjie, that's that that is that is really fun. Because a lot of people try building tools to help them with their problems, and then they horribly fail.
Arvid:And then they have more problems than a tool that doesn't work, but it seems to have worked
Kitze:out pretty well for you. So far, it works. At first, I thought I'm gonna be mother Teresa. If I I listen to the first episode of Kids A Cast, like because it's kinda crazy to listen to your own podcast. I don't know if you ever do it.
Arvid:Oh, for sure.
Kitze:It's weird. Yeah. It is weird. But I'm like, okay. I wanna hear my thoughts from January.
Kitze:Like, what was I playing? What was I saying? Because that's my what my podcast is, just ranting. And I was saying that Benjie should be free, and I wanna battle the evil forces of, like, TikTok and Facebook and Instagram making everyone addicted, and I'm gonna give the world this free app to make their life better. Doesn't work that way because I'm pouring.
Kitze:You know, I'm working every day on it like a madman. And throughout these 60 episodes, my thinking has shifted into, okay. There might be a free plan, and there's gonna be a pro plan. And couple days ago, I was like, fuck it. There's no free plan.
Kitze:So I give people 7 check ins, meaning not 7 days because you might not have 7 consecutive days to test it, but you can check-in into the app any 7 times and explore all the features because it's better I figured it's better to give them all the features to explore and then decide whether they wanna pay or not rather than giving them 3 features, like to dos habits and routines, and then telling them to pay for the rest of the features which they haven't tried. So I'm not sure if this will I already have, like, a few purchases. So III these are the things that I hate in a product. You know, they're necessary. Because with with Sizzee, like, I struck gold.
Kitze:And literally without much effort except tweeting, it exploded in MRR and revenue and everything. So now with every other product, I was like, do you know that GIF of, that little bird who's who's used to the mother feeding them and it goes with the open mouth? You know?
Arvid:Yes. Just at at the worm in front of them. Like,
Kitze:That was me with all the
Kitze:other products. I'm like, I launched it. Where's the where's the $1, 000, 000? Like, what is wrong with people? So so it's weird to me now that for the other products, I have to do all the hard things.
Kitze:Like today, for Benjie, I was implementing, like, a user checklist to not users to check creating a to do and then do the thing and then make sure to check out fasting. And I hate working on this, but I'm like, if you don't, you can yell at a cloud as much as you want, but revenue is not gonna increase unless you work on this too.
Arvid:I think the the big difference and and that's just for me observing how you've been building them over, like, months years, I guess, is that Sizzy is a clear tool, like, a a very clear tool. You have a you already know your task. Yep. You know what you wanna accomplish, and then Sizzy helps you get there by being less in the way. That's really what it is.
Arvid:Right? And and then I look at Benjie, and that's such an aspirational project. Like, a product for people who have aspirations, who have dreams and goals, and then maybe they even understand how to get there. They're not professional, like, habit havers. Right?
Arvid:They are people who would love to be more and better at at habits, but they have to figure out a way how it could work for them, which is it's hard. It's hard to to even want to be better at something. Most people are just complacent with where they at. So, obviously, it takes a bit more education in the product. How much, how much time do you spend generally on marketing for for these products?
Arvid:Like, maybe in in in, relation to how much time you spent working on the product.
Kitze:99% product development, 1% marketing. My main marketing channel is just tweeting. I'm getting better at this, at recording fancier, a bit fancier videos and and trying to, like, talk about my life, but also showing the product in the same at the same time. But I've realized I remember when I launched CZ, I was like, holy shit. Like, marketing is not only tweeting.
Kitze:Because we started getting the SEO was good and we started getting customers from all over the world. And you would be surprised by what kind of bubble is Twitter when it comes to web development. Like, you just need to look at the CZ inbox to see what kind of frameworks people still use and what are they building with. And then you go on Twitter, the bubble, and everyone is on the latest and greatest. So marketing, I wanna say I'm doing marketing, but I'm realistically not doing anything outside of Twitter.
Kitze:I've never done any proper, like, ads or YouTube ads or never tried to do, like, you know, here's my day in a vlog, but to make sure that I'm shoving all of my products in people's faces. I haven't tried that route of marketing. Basically, I wanna do things that I I know which things would work. Like, I can clearly see for other people's products what works, but also I don't wanna some sell my soul to the devil and do some things. You know?
Arvid:Yeah. And and you have this a lot with, like, these very prolific indie hackers in our community that have this this very almost extroverted style that have no problem making, like, a fun video or making making, like, a a meme intentionally and distributing it and not dealing with all the backlash of everybody calling them idiots. Right? They're They're just fine with that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Arvid:It's also not my personality, and I think that's maybe often a drawback in this field where attention is so sparse, right, where everybody you said at TikTok, Instagram that they're they're just taking our attention away and then having any mental capacity left for looking at a product and saying, oh, that's interesting. That's pretty rare. Right? And reaching those people, like, that feels like a very hard thing. Have you ever tried to to think about going to conferences, that kind of stuff?
Arvid:Just, you know, have a booth maybe with with that at a at a developer conference?
Kitze:I've I've been speaking at conferences. Pre COVID, I've been speaking a lot. After COVID, I'm speaking, like, let's say, 5, 6 times per year. But until very recently, like, I wasn't even mentioning like, I feel like icky just mentioning my own product and making, like, hey. Also, check out my thing.
Kitze:You know? Like, I learned I even said it on stage, you know, that marketing is dirty, and I hate doing this, and we didn't even have merch until a couple of years ago. So but it clearly worked. When I started mentioning my products, people would come afterwards and be like, hey. So what is this and how does it work?
Kitze:And people are just interested, man. I don't know, like, why does it feel so dirty to do marketing?
Arvid:I don't know. I don't know either. I I remember 1 thing, like, when I was still working as a software engineer, like, with the with the salary, you know, like, 9 to 5, I I had that phase in my life. They the the marketing people were kinda I I don't know. My my tech team, we always kinda laughed at them, and we always looked at them and said, they have no idea what's going on, and they don't understand how complicated this is.
Arvid:And it's just selling stuff that they don't even understand. I think there was a divide, and somebody was actively fueling this. Like, from my early days in in university, like, studying computer science, it always was, ah, look at these business people. These are idiots. They have no idea.
Arvid:And I think that just sticks with you. And it's wrong because now we're both, and we have to accept that part of ourselves that is a business person and just wants to make money, just wants to sell a good product to the people who need it. And it's so hard to get rid of that old notion of, ah, not technical? Idiot.
Kitze:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super hard. Super hard.
Arvid:Well, I guess I guess that's the balance we have to strike if if we are solo solopreneurs, indie hackers. And I think when when I'm thinking of balance and and you striking it, I what I love and I just wanted to thank you for this, because I've been seeing you being so actively doing it over the last couple months. You show that you'd actively take time away from building, from marketing, from all of these things, and spend it with your family. And I think I I really love this. I love that you do this so openly and so clearly, and that your priorities are with your kids and with your wife and with just being at home and being a a person, not just a founder.
Arvid:I think that's really, really important, and you're you're modeling this really well.
Kitze:It's I would say this is the hardest thing of my life when you said, you know, just a person. I wanna make a merge. I've never made merch. 1 of the things I wanna have is a t shirt and a motto basically called just be a person. Because I think everyone went to this freaking crazy direction of I've been there.
Kitze:I've worked the hours. I've worked the I've I did the 12 hour streams, 14 hour streams sometimes, working weekends. I've went through all of it, but because I don't wanna be a hypocrite and to be like, you know, some things to some people who are trying to sell you books and shit, they're like, I've been this way forever. You need to meditate for 7 hours. No.
Kitze:Like, you you worked your ass off back in the day. So now you can meditate for 7 hours. But in the last, like, especially since I had a kid and a while before that, since, like, during COVID, I I got my first mental health issues, like a panic attack and anxiety attack. And I was like, oh, why is this happening? And then I got a book about anxiety.
Kitze:And literally in the book it said, it's happening because you're freaking moron. Every chapter title of the book, you're doing it the opposite way. Like, you don't take breaks. You're working too much. You're on the computer all day.
Kitze:And I still see people on Twitter, like, I'm opening Twitter with this comeback later thing, like, every 5 but no matter when I open it, the same people more or less are around all the time. And I feel sorry for them. I'm like, I know how addicting is this, and I am addicted from it, and I'm trying to control it. And there's no way to tell them, hey, dude. Like, this is very bad, and it's gonna affect you very bad.
Kitze:Like, it's a constant everyday battle for myself to try to choose the unproductive things because especially when you have, like, ADHD and you try like, your brain constantly creates ideas and things you could be doing to be productive all the time. Like, yesterday, I've been, like, in between the concrete blocks where we're gonna put the the above ground pool. There's, like, grass and weeds and shit. So I had to go to the hardware store and buy a tool, and I've been plucking those fuckers for, like, hours. At the same time, battling that if I spend these 2 hours on, you know, working on Benjie and I hired someone to do this, it would be financially better, but for for me, but I I have to calm myself down and be like, no.
Kitze:Like, in order to keep your brain fresh, you gotta do all of these touching grass activities and pulling grass activities in order to be to be a person. You know? It's hard.
Arvid:Yeah. And I think it's an illusion too. Like, the what our brain comes up with, these justifications, like, oh, this is gonna be so much better financially, and this is gonna impact my future much more. And, yeah, maybe. But if you don't do anything else, you're gonna burn out, you're gonna destroy your mental health, your sanity, the relationships more importantly than anything else.
Arvid:You're gonna destroy your your your marriage or whatever, and then you sit there with a $1, 000, 000 and nobody to share your life with. Like, that's what that's not worth anything at all. And I think that's hard that's hard for people who don't yet have found a partner or who don't yet have kids. Right? Who don't have responsibilities, who just can do whatever they want.
Arvid:I think it's hard for them to grasp, so they fall into the grindset. The fucking grindset. The the the this this thing that I hate so much. I I was part of that myself at some point, and it it took me a really long while to get out of there.
Kitze:There is a time and a place. I don't hate on I I hate the term, you know, grinding and whatever. I think we're overusing all of these terms, but there is a time and space for it definitely. Like, especially, like, my advice that I would give to, like, young founders and shit, if you're single, like, you don't have a partner, and you don't have kids, and you don't have a pet because all of these things take time. Like, when I got a pet like, when I got Benjie, that's the name of my dog, actually, like, my timing that they actually reduced because of the 3 walks and the things I need to do.
Kitze:Then with my wife, there's, like, dates and stuff we would like to do. And then with a kid, like, you need to super prioritize your time, and there can always be this young founder who can just not sleep and work 247 and out ship you, basically. So now is the time for the grinding because eventually, you need to slow down and you will have very few blocks in the day where you can shove up work, which ironically helps you sometimes work fast, better and do better moves. Because if you don't do better moves, you're just gonna work all day on random shit and then lose the day. But there there is a time and a place.
Kitze:Don't be the person in your, I don't know, thirties, forties abandoning your family and leaving everyone behind because you're just like, only if I work 5 hours more.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's I I think that's what a lot of people who employ people want them to think. Right? That the more time spent on work is time better spent.
Arvid:But, I don't wanna go into too many conspiracy theories here. It's just, like, you don't have to force yourself to do something that is not conducive to the enjoyment and the the product, the productivity, not of of your, like, productive work life, but of your whole life. Right? Like, what do you what do you make? Do you make a family?
Arvid:Do you create wealth? Do you create joy? That is also productivity. Right? It's not just do I check off a box on a list somewhere, even though that's that's important.
Arvid:I think, like, particularly what you just said with, like, you have this early time in your life, you just need to spend time on stuff. You just need to get experience in a field, and then you will become better at prioritizing and figuring out what is important and what is not. And that time should come early. And if not, well, then it will take a little bit longer later with all the priorities you might have.
Kitze:But that's also tricky, and I get people who don't pursue it that way because also when you're young and you don't have a family and everything, you also wanna pursue, you know, the fun life and friends and going out. And I skipped on all of that. I kinda don't regret it. Sometimes I regret it because I lost, like, let's say, I moved countries. But in the process of me grinding, I lost most of my friends back when I lived in Macedonia.
Kitze:They would be like, come on, dude. You Like, I had a job, then I would go to a course, then work out, and do a side project. And I would do that in a loop, and I would just ignore people until they slowly fallen out of my life and not like, why would we even call him? He doesn't do anything except that. And then 1 day you find yourself, you move to a foreign country, and you're like, oh, shit.
Kitze:Kind of friends. You know? That's also an important part of life. So I'm scratching that itch by going to conferences and having some conference friends here and there. But, you know, that, the 3 toggles you have, like, I don't know what it was.
Kitze:When you switch do you try to switch on all of them all of them on and 1 of them would always turn off? You know that Yeah. Picture thing. Yeah. So it's it is there's no other way.
Arvid:Yeah. I think that that is the the sacrifice you make, like, in in this field. And if you're not ready to do this, if you're yeah. You don't have to give up everything, but it will not be the same life as you have in the 9 to 5 where most of your day, the beyond work is just for you to to foster these relationships. Like, I I feel feel the same way.
Arvid:Like, I'm thinking about PodScan all the time. Like, in the shower, like, literally, I I cannot have a shower without doing database migration theory in my mind. It's does not this I can't. It I go in there. I I've I've trained myself, and I don't think it's good, but it just happens.
Arvid:I'm just thinking about database schemas all the time in the shower, and I'm like, what? So crazy.
Kitze:And your partner is like, what are you doing in there? And you're like, I'm working. What does it look like I'm
Arvid:doing? Yeah. The 1 of the less fun things to do in the shower, but apparently, that's what it is. So it's it's really, really bizarre. But that's that that comes with the job.
Arvid:You are everything. You have to think of everything. You have to prioritize everything. And I'm glad, honestly, that you've been building something that helps people with this. I think Benji is great, and I think Sissy does the same thing just in a different way for people to to build their their products.
Arvid:And I I really like it. So I'm I'm glad I'm glad you're doing what you're doing and the way you're doing it too. And I'm really happy that you're doing the podcast. I hope you get to a 100 episodes or 200 or 400, however many. I just really, really enjoy listening to you.
Arvid:Just be yourself. That's really cool.
Kitze:So weird. It was so weird when people say they were listening
Arvid:to you. Yeah. I know the feeling. Yeah. But that's and that's the thing.
Arvid:Maybe with Benjie too, and I have this with Bina, with our dog. Like, just having the dog open up some time that I couldn't spend in front of a computer, and I'm filling it with people that I'm just listening to. Right? I'm filling it with the podcast. All my parasocial relationships, like like ours, they have they start they start right there when I'm out there with the puppy just letting her sniff stuff on the ground.
Arvid:So, you know, you gotta gotta use the time as it comes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I really appreciate you being on the show today. If people wanna learn more about you, if they wanna find out about you, your products, and everything that you're building, where do they go?
Kitze:Well, if I say this audibly, they're never gonna spell it. So it's kitze.ioand twitter.com/thekizze. And most listeners will be like, kitse, how do you even how do you say that? So that's KIT zed e. So you can find it somewhere in the description.
Kitze:I'm pretty sure you'll put the links there. Yeah.
Arvid:That would be for sure.
Kitze:I wanted to say, like, 1 thing that we didn't get to say. It's, like, just seeing you build PodScan, it's like it's inspiring because recently you've created some metrics and some, like, Peter levels tweeted that, oh, I'm using this to figure out my mentions and stuff. And no matter how many products I build and no many how no matter how many paths do I follow of other indie hackers building a product, I always start with skepticism even about my own thing and even about your thing. And this is not just you. Everyone else's thing.
Kitze:It starts early, and you're like, why is 1st, you don't even get you keep tweeting, like, pod scan this, pod scan this. I'm like, what the fuck is that thing? I I tried asking people, do you guys know what is Benjie? And I've been tweeting for it for, like, 2 years. Most people have no freaking clue what does it do.
Kitze:So Twitter is not marketing. So I didn't know what is SpotScan, but I see you at it, going at it, going at it, going at it, going at it, going at it. And then when you you're obviously succeeding with it, and it's gonna get big and everything. You're like, holy shit. This is the same loop, like, for everyone and for every product.
Kitze:You start skeptical, like, why is this a product? Why does this exist? And then you see them winning, and you're like, holy shit. So I admire that trait in you, and I appreciate you a lot of success with the product.
Arvid:Oh, man. Same to you. I I think we'll we'll be staying around for a while in the in the hacker world and keep building our things. That's that's for sure. And I'm looking forward to seeing you on your journey, and I'll keep sharing mine.
Arvid:I think it's gonna be a lot of fun for the next couple of years. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Kitze:Thank you. Appreciate it.
Arvid:That's it for today. Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap Founder. You can find me on Twitter at abitkahl, arvidkahl, and you find my books on my Twitter course there too. If you wanna support me in this show, please tell everyone you know about podscan.fm and leave a rating and a review by going to rate this podcast.com/founder. All of this makes a massive difference if you show up there because then the podcast and the product will show up where other people are, and any of this will help me and the show.
Arvid:Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day and bye bye.
Creators and Guests
