396: Jack Friks — Building Tools That Empower Without Overwhelming
Download MP3Hey. It's Arvid, and this is the Bootstrap founder. Today, I'm talking to Jack Fricks. He's one of those builders who actually solves the problems that they face every day. He was spending over an hour daily just posting the same exact content across multiple social platforms to grow his mobile app, and he didn't just complain about expensive, overcomplicated tools like we all do.
Arvid:He actually built something, Postbridge. It's a simple social media scheduler that's now helping thousands of creators and founders all over the place. What started as a personal solution has grown into a, what is it now, $1,301,718,000 dollars a month business, which proves that sometimes the best products come from scratching your own itch. We talk about navigating the noise of social media and still staying authentic, the challenge in building tools that empower without adding to the overwhelm that we already experience, and how Jack balances AI assistance with the human touch that makes good content actually connect with real people. Also we dive into the sodopreneur's eternal struggle of managing multiple platforms and that's the arch nemesis of every indie founder.
Arvid:We get to talk about that too. This episode is sponsored by paddle.com, a merchant of record payment provider of choice, also a great solution to managing multiple platforms. They're taking care of all the things related to money so founders like me and you can focus on building the things that we actually want to build. And Paddle handles all the rest. Sales tax, credit cards, failing, that kind of stuff.
Arvid:All of that they deal with it so you don't have to. I highly recommend it so please check out paddle.com. Alright. Here is Jack. Jack, you're building a social media marketing tool, and I often wonder about the future of social media, mostly because I'm in it and I have been in it for a while.
Arvid:I was there when IRC was all the rage. People were in forums and kind of communicating like that. And then everybody went on Facebook and was friend with everybody else's mom. And now we're in this world where almost every conversation, if you're not really careful, is extremely volatile, explosive, everybody's trolling, at least if you look at Twitter and similar media. Where do you see this going?
Arvid:Where's social media heading?
Speaker 2:For me, I wasn't maybe around that far back, but so far, going forward, it has just been a place where I've used as, like, a personal public journal. Maybe most people are scared of that. That's scary, like, putting your thoughts out there without even really thinking about it sometimes. But, like, the thing is so many things are not human nowadays that if you're honest, if you're being yourself, if you're being a human, it's gonna stand out. And that's where I think social media is going towards is, like, the people who are being human, who have flaws, who clearly show them, and just, like, kind of spit out the raw thoughts, those people are gonna get attention, and those people are going to build something valuable in a place where there's a lot of junk, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's where I see it going right now.
Arvid:Yeah. I think authenticity is is really, over the last couple of years, it's both something that that everybody wants to be more, but also struggles extremely to just maintain. Because it's just so easy to not be authentic, to follow all of these. I I don't know. A couple of years ago, it was everybody on Twitter was doing threads.
Arvid:And then, you know, like, the video happened for a couple of minutes, and and then people were, like, in on on Twitter spaces. I don't know if that's still a thing. Like, it feels it feels hard to to stay true to yourself as a person when everybody's just chasing numbers. Like, you you personally, you have, like, 40 some thousand followers on Twitter, which is significant. That is a is a great accomplishment.
Arvid:Do you sometimes feel obligated to just do something there?
Speaker 2:I mean, to me, I never was trying to grow my Twitter as a goal. Like, I never wanted the followers to go up. Obviously, the number goes up. That's a nice thing. Like, it's like a, you know, you're on a hamster wheel in a sense, but it was never my goal to grow on Twitter.
Speaker 2:It was my goal to make something a business that's valuable. And along the way, I wanted to document it, and Twitter was a great place because you can just put out your thoughts. So I don't feel obligated to post, but I feel like it's now part of the game that I'm in where I post, I do something, I post, I do something, and it grows my business. And then as a byproduct, it grows my followers, which is kind of like the opposite of how some people are maybe approaching it where they try to grow their followers to grow their business, but it doesn't really work because they're not doing something interesting. People see that it's like they can tell.
Speaker 2:Like, you can tell if somebody's really doing something or they're just, like, tweeting aphorisms. And, yeah, it's a long answer to your short question, but I don't think followers were ever, for me, like, the the goal.
Arvid:Yeah. If if that is the goal, most things you do become performative too. Right? Yeah. Like, that's like you said, the aphorisms.
Arvid:Like, it's great when Naval Ravikan tweets these things, even though I'm I'm not sure if I enjoy them as much as I used to in the past at this point because it's just such a cliche too. Right? Like, you immediately get assigned kind of a, oh, yeah. Twitter guru. Okay.
Arvid:Let's just ignore whatever this person is saying. They're just reading it out. Right? They're just talking about stuff. They're not doing anything.
Arvid:I like your approach. I like doing things and then talking about them, and and that kind of fuels this this kind of cycle of of activity. It's it's it's a momentum thing, if it sounds very much like that. When you know that this is your method, you know, everything that gets measured gets optimized. Right?
Arvid:That's the thing. Do you sometimes do things so you can talk about them? Is that also part of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I feel like I do. Not that I try to, but it's, like, it's always the monkey brain, like, getting to me. It's like, hey. You need to post about this so you can grow your business, and you need to do this thing so then you can post about it so then you can grow.
Speaker 2:So it's it's a weird game, but I feel like every day I'm trying to find a way to play it better that's serving not just my business, but, like, my mental health. Like, because, obviously, if you're on social media and everything's about posting, it drains you. It's not fun at a certain point.
Arvid:Yeah. I noticed, like obviously, I've been following you for a while because I'm just super interested in in your work and your approach to it. Building in public is my thing too. So when I see people do it right and do it well, I'm I'm immediately attracted to their their social feeds. And what I noticed is you're kinda edgy without being edgy.
Arvid:Like, you have opinions. Right? You have spiky point of views, but you are not polarizing. That's something that some people in our indie hacker community, computer levels, are doing really well. Right?
Arvid:Like, they're they're extremely polarizing just by being themselves. But you you have a way where it's you have a point of view that is strong, but it doesn't feel like it's insulting or kinda aggravating me. Is is that a conscious choice, or is it just you?
Speaker 2:I think at some level it's conscious, but ultimately, I think I am kind of a people pleaser in many ways. Like, I don't wanna offend people. So I've thought about that a lot when I make tweets, and it's be kind I don't know how think about it anymore. I've realized that people are gonna be mad no what no matter what I say, but there's definitely a nicer way to say things. And I try to make the things I say be objective as well, even if they're my opinions, be nice about it.
Speaker 2:Because I don't wanna I don't wanna make anyone feel, like, alienated. Yeah. It's kind of conscious. It's kind of, like, in the back from however many years back into my childhood.
Arvid:Well, I I'm similar like this. I I try to be kind and friendly mostly because I think if I send a message out there that is kind and friendly, it's gonna attract kind and friendly people. And I see the same in in your work, like, in in your presence as well.
Speaker 2:For sure. That's that's exactly what I'm going for. I don't want to attract the wrong people too. I guess that's a big part of why I try to stay kind and nice and, like, not try to, like, polarize anyone is because, like, my replies now, because of that, after, like, a year, it shows. Like, everyone's very nice to me.
Speaker 2:I'm very lucky.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. I guess that is the that is a very clear consequence of this. If you start insulting people, you will get to be insulted back.
Speaker 2:Right? That's just gonna happen.
Arvid:Yeah. Do do you block a lot of things on Twitter? Because I I I block a lot of topics just to not not have them in my feed. Do you do that too?
Speaker 2:I've never blocked a topic or, like, a word. I've blocked, like, maybe three people, but I try to I try usually, I just mute now because it does the same thing. But yeah. No. I don't really I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I don't block things because for some reason, my feed is curated pretty decently just by, as you said, focusing on what I wanted to see more of. That's kind of like a I don't know if you know VisaCon Verasimi. I don't know you know if I said his name right, but he's been a very big inspiration for me. That he's just, like, a very positive person. I've seen how everyone reacts to him because he's showing, like, he's being nice.
Speaker 2:He's being, you know, kind, really. And that's, I think, most of what my feed is now is, like, nice people, which is which is really lucky.
Arvid:Yeah. Visa is a good example. Like, the the law of attraction really works because he's a he's a smart person, like, an extremely smart person, but he's he's always trying to teach without kind of being pushy. Right? He just explains.
Arvid:He's kinda show and tell kind of person. And that attracts people who resonate with that, who are similar to this, and it just invites a nice community around them. I see this in in your work as well. It's really cool. And it is also so funny to me that from that perspective of being being kind, being friendly, you would build a business allowing other people to get the same thing done.
Arvid:That that to me is really nice. That's that's a at least what what I've seen you do, how you build Postbridge is that. So could you try to build a tool that is an empowering tool, but it's it's not just like a cutthroat marketing tool because that's a it's a hard balance to strike. Right? You are in an extremely red ocean with Postbridge of social media marketing tools where a lot of them are trying to cut corners, but I don't see you doing it.
Arvid:It's it's how how do you approach building a tool in a space where there's a lot of let's not call it exploitation. That's not the right word, but confrontation and confrontative application design.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it was easy for me because I focused on building it for myself. Maybe that's not the answer to everybody's problems. I've said that a lot. I it definitely doesn't solve everything because you could make something that, you know, maybe only three other people want. But I made it for myself back, like, in October because everything else was too expensive.
Speaker 2:It had too much like, had too much features. It was too much. So when I made it for myself, I made it, like, as simple as possible and as useful as possible for me, which turned out to be very useful for other people. Like, I didn't expect it to really do as well as it did because, as you said, it's a red ocean. Like, there's so many people making similar tools.
Speaker 2:So my angle was just to make something that really gives people a valuable like, something of value for a very fair price. And I don't have to, like, say, oh, this is better. That's better. This is better. I can just point them to my pricing page, point them to the features.
Speaker 2:It does very similar things. It works. And I'm someone who's using my own tool every day, so I'm incentivized to make it better for a certain person. Like, a certain person right now is, like, mobile app founders. I grew by a mobile app with, like, organic content.
Speaker 2:I use PostBridge to post the content to make it easier. This is exactly how I did it. It's literally my pinned tweet. It's, like, one of my most popular tweets because it's actually very useful, and then people go and use the tool. I don't have to compete on, like, small things.
Speaker 2:I just give something of value. People appreciate that a lot, and they share with their friends oddly enough. Like, I've never had that word-of-mouth go as far, but in this case, it has.
Arvid:That's awesome. And so how do you use the tool every day? Can you walk us through this?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I originally built the tool because you're posting say you have a mobile app. I had mine. It's called Curiosity Quench. It was at, like, 60,000 downloads, and I was getting a lot of downloads through organic videos.
Speaker 2:So I'd make a six second video, and I would post it to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, Twitter threads, blue sky, like, everywhere. And that video, to post it everywhere, you have to go manually upload it. So I use Postbridge to post it all those places at the same time. Just saves me, like, ten, twenty minutes a day per video. And then later, I found this format that worked really well, So I automated it.
Speaker 2:You can make it in Postbridge, and it outputs, like, the video. You just upload basic, like, parts of the template. And then I use that now. Like, basically, every day, I make the simple template. I upload it to all the channels from my app, and I kind of run it on autopilot.
Speaker 2:It's not exactly autopilot, but I use it every day for that to market mobile apps and then also to just post. Like, if I wanna post my tweet, I post it Twitter, threads, where else? Facebook, LinkedIn, and Blue Sky. And then it just makes it easier to actually get whatever I'm putting out there out there because I really only open Twitter. Like, if, like, if if I'm on my personal tweets.
Speaker 2:So it just makes like, save me some time.
Arvid:I mean, most most tools that have the highest impact on my life are the things that save me just some time because it just accumulates. Right? Like, everything you do, if you save five minutes, you do it 20 times a day, that's two hours. Right? That that's significant.
Arvid:And how do you deal with engagement? Like, when you when you tweet something out, and I use this loosely as you just publish something, I think that's what they wanna call it anyway, onto all these different platforms. People react differently on different platforms. How do you make sure that you stay kinda in touch with all the the feedback that might come there?
Speaker 2:Truthfully, I don't. Like, I I go to Twitter. That's, like, the one place that I open up, I guess, every day. And the rest of them, like, I'll check, like, maybe once a week, once a month. Like, if I remember, like, it's not something I really keep track of.
Speaker 2:I do see that, like, some of the other platforms, they get likes, they get attention, But, like, you only have so much time in a day. And even if I was to automate that part replying, it would be robotic in a sense. Like, I think there's there's some good in not getting it to it all and not managing it all is that, like, people realize you're a human, that that's okay. Like, you can't get to everything. And yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I probably spent too much time on Twitter replying to everybody, but if I did everywhere else, then I really wouldn't be able to do anything.
Arvid:Yeah. That's that's a that's a problem. Right? Like, with all these many different platforms, like, being present on either one of them is already a challenge, but being present on all of them is is almost impossible. Like, I feel the only way I can do this is when somebody alerts me that there's something going on.
Arvid:Right? If if if I have a tool that just tracks comments and if there is a significant number, that's when I will go into a thing. I will not check manually. I I post on LinkedIn, I guess, occasionally. I I think last time I posted was a week ago.
Arvid:I haven't opened LinkedIn since. There's probably a comment somewhere in there. Just haven't really done anything about it. I was same same shortcoming on my end, but it's just impossible to track all of these things at the same time. And that that to me is kind of why I asked you this initial question too about where do you think social media going?
Arvid:Because in the beginning, it was highly relational and highly interconnected. Right? Every this is kind of what what Nerial describes in in his book, The Hook Cycle. The idea is that this is an ongoing conversation where somebody says something, somebody reacts to it, then people look at it because they want to know what's being said, and that triggers a notification. Then they post something, and then some some you know, it's a cycle that just keeps going on.
Arvid:And that was the beginning of social media to me. You post something, somebody gets a notification, they post something, I get a notification, and so on. Now at this point, like, I have notifications turned off. Like, the hook cycle doesn't get me anymore with the the trigger because I turn off all the triggers. I it's hard to turn this into any kind of meaningful insight, really, because that's just what it is.
Arvid:But do you think this is problematic for how we communicate?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it's probably for the best. Social media, like, originally, it was invasive, like, on humans. Like, shouldn't get notification every ten seconds or every minute or every ten minutes even for someone pinging you, like, because you have a real life. Like, social media is real, but in real life, you wouldn't have, like, 15 people talking to you in the same day. It's like two people.
Speaker 2:So I think it's for the best. I also have social media notifications off for everything. Like, the only push notifications I have is text messages from, like, a few people. That's it. I think that's the way it should be.
Speaker 2:And I think, like, I think that's okay. Like, there has to be some some type of place where you realize that you cannot get to everything on the Internet.
Arvid:That is such an interesting insight. I would my my mind was like, no. You should be reachable all times. But I was like, no. No.
Arvid:No. No. It's funny. And I really like the perspective. It's it's very, like, human centric.
Arvid:Okay? It's not it's not like communication centric where everybody's reachable at all times, and that's great, and it's very productive or whatever. Right? It's very like, I need to have my own space and notifications are intrusions. That's a very good perspective.
Arvid:Funny enough, earlier today on Hacker News, I read some somebody commented something about ICQ back in the day. And they they were like they were very early to ICQ back when the do you know what ICQ is? No. I Okay. ICQ AIM were these instant messengers like MSN back in the day, like the yeah.
Arvid:Like, what WhatsApp is now, but in the late nineties or early two thousands. Right? That and ICQ was one of them. It's gone. It doesn't exist anymore.
Arvid:And your your login was a number, and that was just kind of the ID that you had in that database. So I had a six figure number. So I was among the first, like, 900,000 people that got an account, and that was a big status symbol back in the day because all my friends had eight figure numbers. They were, like, couple of millions into it. It's like having a Twitter account that is, like, 2,005 or something.
Arvid:Right? That's that's the same signal. And ICQ was one of the first that were instant messengers where you could just get pinged. And the guy was saying when I first saw ICQ, I was like, I don't want this. I don't wanna be reachable at all times.
Arvid:People should not be reachable. It's funny that you say the exact same thing because that is such a rare perspective nowadays where everybody has their email notifications on because, you know, their boss might talk to them at some random point in the night. And the same goes for Facebook. The same goes for WhatsApp or for messages or whatever. It is an interesting perspective to say that social media does not have to be kind of synchronous anymore.
Arvid:You don't have to jump in when the conversation is happening. You can go in when you have time for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I think that's the best part about it. It's like that's the whole point. I feel like that was the whole point originally of the Internet is to be able to do things when you want them, and then it, like, kinda flipped. I don't know when it I probably flipped at the beginning, and, like, we're just unflipping it now, it feels like, or at least in my head. I'm unflipping it.
Arvid:Yeah. I I think there might be a movement here. Like, there might be a change in perspective because people are just fed up. Well, you are building a tool that helps add to the noise, if if I were to say it cynically. Right?
Arvid:So how do you prevent that? Like, let's let's just say this. Like, you're building a tool that might help adding to the noise if used in the wrong way. So how do you approach preventing people from, like, spamming too much or from being like, giving just canned tweets or, for that matter, just using AI to do everything. Is is that something that you're actively working against?
Speaker 2:I mean, there's two levels to it. There's, like, a business level is my business is trying to provide value and allow people to post their content, whatever that is, to everywhere, to all the social media platforms. There's another side of this where the app I originally made before PostBridge, it's called Curiosity Quench. Its whole mission was actually to help people stop scrolling on their phones. So you think they're against each other, but, really, the reason I made postage was because I was trying to promote my anti scrolling app, but I was having to scroll to actually post all these videos because you get sucked into the loop every time you manually manually post.
Speaker 2:So not only time, but attention was a big thing in making PostBridge what it is, and that's a place where you can post your videos without going to those dreadful suck you in apps, like Instagram and TikTok, especially, I wanted to never be on those. So I haven't opened those apps. I don't open those apps for months at a time now. And the thing is, yeah, you're right. I add to the noise, people in Postbridge posting videos, But I don't know, like, if there's a if there's, like, a way to go about it other than not existing on the Internet where you're not in some capacity adding to the noise.
Arvid:Yeah. I think marketing, generally, you have to have some kind of cognitive dissonance because you add to other people's ads, right, literally. It's just when when you market, when you try to present your solution to their problem, you might hit the wrong people and they might be slightly annoyed. They might not want to see it, but you will likely also hit the right people and they find something that solves their problem. I think that's something that I had to, like, mentally decode and re encode in my mind because I was, like, a complete marketing enemy for most of my life.
Arvid:And then I started building my own businesses, and I noticed, I got to talk about my stuff. And for the right people, this is not annoying. Right? For the right people, this is the right thing. And your posts about the app that helps them scroll less will reach them while they are scrolling.
Arvid:That makes a lot of sense to me. That's the perfect point to reach them. So I I don't want to sound like this is kind of a confrontation or anything because most tools can be used in a positive and a negative way. Right? So my question is more like, how do you prevent abuse?
Speaker 2:To prevent abuse, it's kind of hard because I'm saying that what I think is best is best for everybody. So it's not something I moderate. I don't moderate content. The good thing about it being connected to the official APIs is they do moderate content themselves. Obviously, that's not gonna stop, like, if this thing if this content is very low quality, it's not helping, it's not beneficial, it's just entertainment, I'm not gonna say they can't post it.
Speaker 2:Would I, like, would I post it myself? Maybe not. Is it, like, valuable to anyone? Maybe not. But, I mean, the algorithms do their job in the sense that they're gonna put content that people really enjoy in some capacity out to more people.
Speaker 2:They don't push, like, the swap really as much right now. Obviously, that's not absolute rule, but I don't really prevent abuse. I just kind of hope that people can make their own decisions for what they wanna watch and what they wanna post, and that's kind of where I leave it right now.
Arvid:Makes sense to me. Like, that's that also should probably not be the scope of an indie product. Right? Like, abuse prevention and moderation that feels like it's already hard enough for the platforms to do it. Like, why would you have to add to that?
Arvid:Talking about scope, I think you build tools, like you said, that are not as kind of overgrown and feature stuffed as others. Now you say this, having built this for, what, like, a year now. Right? Like, it's a it's a year year ish old, the the product. Like, how old is the product?
Speaker 2:Post Bridge? Yes. October. So so seven months. Mhmm.
Arvid:Yeah. So you're seven months in. How can you make sure that the product stays lean over the next couple months and years? Because, otherwise, your product would also turn into one of these kind of overgrown kinda kinda feature rich things. How how do you focus on on staying lean and manageable for you as a as a solopreneur?
Speaker 2:I think so far, best thing for me has been only building for myself in a sense. I do add, like, if someone wants a feature and it's something that's, like, very reasonable, it's not gonna add a super complex, like, workflow to the tool. I will add it. But I mostly build for, like, what am I using this day to day? How can this make my day simpler and easier?
Speaker 2:And also, yeah, I'm constantly thinking everything I do. Is this something that is going to bloat the software and make it less valuable to, like, a normal first time user? So I think about those things every time I do something. I don't know if I can really prevent adding in too much features because it's, like, it's a very weird middle ground. The main thing I've always wanted to center this center my product around is being as simple as possible.
Speaker 2:So if it still can remain simple, I'll add the feature. Like, right now, the main thing that I'm gonna be working on are not, like, complex things. They're, like, content generation, which is kind of its own product, but it's not making the the base tool any more complex. It's just adding more optionality to what they can do with the tool.
Arvid:Yeah. This is kind of like an an input stream into the tool. Right? It's it doesn't change the tool. Let's talk about this.
Arvid:Content generation usually happens in my brain, but more recently, it happens when I just speak into my my my what what do you use it? Like, I think I just use my phone or or any microphone, and then I use the transcript. And then I use an AI. And then I use that to come up with, like, some stuff. But how do you approach content generation in in the world of AI, like in the world where people talk to their chatbots all day, what what's your approach?
Speaker 2:I mean, so if we're talking about content for, like, Twitter, like, I'm posting text posts, I've never I never use AI any I just don't use AI. I don't, like, really think it's needed at the moment for me because when I'm building something, I have so many stray thoughts. And if I just go and look on Twitter and I see someone else's thought, it triggers a thought in my mind. And I don't filter it. I just post what's on my mind.
Speaker 2:Half the time, it's like no one sees it. No one cares. But, you know, a tenth of the time, what I'm thinking is just my normal thought. It's controversial. It's like it's a big thing.
Speaker 2:It's not like a big thing for me, but, like, you're gonna wrestle some feathers eventually if you're just speaking what you're thinking because everybody's so you know, like, everybody has different thoughts. So I don't really use for content generation text wise, I don't use AI just because I'm I got enough going on up here. It just I need to get it out. So I use Twitter as a journal and that's like my content approach.
Arvid:So how how do you think about building content generation into your product then?
Speaker 2:So for me, I'm thinking more video and images. And right now, like, you can use AI tools to make content. Like you could, you know, ask chat GPT, the image generation, to make you this post with this idea. But ultimately, what I want to create is something for businesses to drive organic growth. So like, first vision would be, here's templates that work, that have results.
Speaker 2:Here's how to use them. Here's what to do to go for to emit a reaction, emotion from the your target audience. And here's some ideas on how you can do that with in each scope, like, niches are gonna have different things. So just guiding someone to get a result that's actually valuable, like getting users to their product. That's, like, the main scope that I'm going towards right now.
Speaker 2:Because if I go too narrow or go too wide, it's like no one knows what to where to start. Right? Because you said, like, you use AI to get ideas and to narrow them down. People I have no idea where to start, so I'm trying to provide a starting point with AI, like, with content generation. Not done for you completely, but, like, a guided approach.
Arvid:Yeah. That that makes sense. I I like that you you have numbers to back things up. Right? Like, things that work.
Arvid:To me, they're always short lived or at least they have a a kind of a shelf life or, like, a a date there. Right? Like, how often do you change these things? Like, do do things from a year ago still work, or is it different platform to platform?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It definitely depends platform to platform, and I'm always iterating myself. I think the best thing you can do if you want results, like, over time is to still be always iterating in some capacity. So if you have a video format, say, like, just use this as an example, that video format may work for, like, a year and or maybe it works for five months, but most people don't even use it for that long as long as it works. They give up because it's repetitive even though it's still providing results.
Speaker 2:So there's like, do you switch it out because I've been doing this for so long, or do I switch it out because it's not bringing results? And usually people switch it out before the results stop drawing up, which is weird. I mean, I maybe it's I've understand why, like, human brain, like, we need something new. We need something new. But if you have something that works, you keep using it.
Speaker 2:And if it doesn't work anymore, like you said, you basically iterate until you find something that works again, which is easier said than done, obviously. But the whole approach, which I wanna take for content generation is helping people find what's current. And that's a hard game to play because everything changes so quickly. But, I mean, I'm not saying I'm gonna do it perfectly. I'm saying I'm gonna try, which is
Arvid:Yeah. And it's already better than having them to have to figure it out themselves. Right? Like, that's that's the great idea about templating and and tools like this. It's like, okay.
Arvid:Here's the starting point. Now we can make it our own, but the starting point at least gives us some kind of guidelines. I think that's that's really helpful. And that's the kind of content generation that I resonate with when there's a shape that I get to fill instead of something that somebody else does for me. I don't really like that.
Arvid:I I feel I I need to have not control, but an understanding of the thing that I'm doing. Right? And that's what a what a good template does. Interesting that you that you move away from, like, AI as as a text generator. That that's wonderful.
Arvid:Do you use AI in coding the product that you're working on right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I use Cursor. Cursor helps me a ton. I didn't really know how to code a year and a half ago now. I think it's been a bit more actually.
Speaker 2:Like, less than two years ago, I didn't really know how to code. Not really I got new basic HTML, CSS, but, like, AI has really helped me learn a lot. I don't use it for content generation, but it's it's like an amazing tool for just, like, rapid pace learning and understanding because no one's judging you. Right?
Arvid:Well, people judge you for using AI, but the AI doesn't judge you. That's for sure. Doesn't care. Yeah. I think and not just for coding, like, for everything.
Arvid:Like, if you have a if you have a health issue that you don't wanna talk to people about, you talk to the AI and you get some insights into it. Right? Or if you if you struggle with your religion of all things. Right? Like, AI will try to help you through all kinds of things and will never be judgy.
Arvid:I like that too. I I really think it's the most powerful nonjudgmental teacher that anybody can have for free. Right? That's just really what it is. I come from a a software development background.
Arvid:I've been doing this for twenty years or so, which is why it's weird to me to hear that a year and a half ago you didn't know how to code, at least not on on a professional level. But the founder and the bootstrapped indie hacker community member in me is like, yes, that's amazing. That's awesome. Congrats. Because that would not have been possible, like, four years ago.
Arvid:It just wouldn't. Right? So more recently, with the whole vibe coding thing in our community, a lot of people have been very vocal about obviously how great this is, but also on the other side, how dangerous it is in terms of authentication and where people build stuff that is just so hackable, right, so abusable. Is is that something that you have encountered in building your own products? Like, that maybe there was a moment where you didn't really know how to do it right?
Arvid:Like, how did you approach those moments when when it was like, this might be a security issue or this might be something dangerous? How did you work with that?
Speaker 2:So early on when I was learning, I didn't have much users, but I did have a a good enough understanding that security mattered to, like, to check things. I don't I think a lot of people skip over the checks and they can get away with it, but then the second you get users, they get hacked. And even I got attacked, like, twice in the, like, in the last few months because I was kind of a proponent of vibe coding. So people went for me, luckily, my sites were secure to the point where no user data is harmed. And really, the biggest thing was just, like, I got a bigger bill from my provider.
Speaker 2:But I've learned to like, I basically sped around how to secure my sites. Not obviously, everything is cat and mouse. Like, you always have to be keeping an eye on things. You can't oh, you're not always a 100 secure. Like, no one is.
Speaker 2:But, like, I've gotten an understanding of the basic securities. And I think it's nice to see people vibe coding, but, like, they should know that, obviously, if you're dealing with customer information, you should you can prompt your way to making something decently secure. You should take into consideration. I think that's I think it's a good thing that people are talking about it. Because, yeah, it's danger it's dangerous if you have a business even from, like, your from your risk as a founder and you lose people's information or you leak it or you get hacked and your business is gone overnight.
Speaker 2:You don't want any of that to happen. Not that you should be, like, scared, I get or not that you should be, like, never do anything because maybe I'll get hacked. But just, like, having the idea that someone could attack you and you should be careful is good overall.
Arvid:Yeah. I I mean, that that is the default position of anybody who's been in this industry over the last couple decades because that is just a reality. Like, if you put a server or just a computer, if you connect it to the Internet, you can wait a couple minutes, and then the first requests are coming in trying to probe you, trying to see, is there any port open that we could attack? Right? Like, it's just it's it's all automated all over the world.
Arvid:So everybody's always looking out for some way to get access to your system for some some kind of thing. Right? Might be a botnet or whatever. So that is the default position. There was a a glimpse of a more utopian perspective when vibe coding started where people were like, ah, whatever.
Arvid:But they have found their way back into the security centric perspective. So I'm glad to hear that that you have paid attention from the start. But I I think it would be nice to have a kind of a a kind of vibe coding academy where people would still learn the very important basics of building, like, publicly available software. But that that is just me being a a wishful thinker at this point. But interesting.
Arvid:Do you do you use AI, like, outside of coding too in your business for things like customer service or blog posts or anything like that?
Speaker 2:Honestly, no. Not really. I I don't know why. Maybe I'm anti AI in some cases. Like, I just avoided it because I like the human aspect of a lot of things.
Speaker 2:It's fun to just, like, to think through everything and even make a lot of mistakes. Like like, I make typos and everything, like, so often, but it's kind of like I'm at the point where I don't feel like it overall improves my workflow, so I don't do it. If it's not, like, a thousand percent beneficial, I don't bother adding anything AI to my workflow. And maybe I think I'm probably an odd an odd one out there. But I I even in my product, I don't really I don't use AI.
Speaker 2:Like, I don't have really any AI tooling inside of it, and that just keeps things, like, bare bones as possible.
Arvid:I think this is one of the reasons why people like you those this much. Like, I think that the fact that you don't jump on this bandwagon or if if you are, you're very skeptical about it. I think that that level of, like, focus on the essence of humanity inside you, your authentic self, that is something that other people would give up for money very quickly, yet you do not. Right? That's that's what I think is is is so outstanding about you, and that's probably also what fuels your Twitter presence and your presence on on other social media too.
Arvid:I really like that. It's rare. I try to do the same. I have a hard time. Like, AI is just so alluring to me.
Arvid:I can just make it do stuff, and then it's done. It's not gonna be exactly what I wanted to do, but it's done. And for a founder, done is mostly better than having to do it. Right? Yeah.
Arvid:Most most of the time. It's it's a it's a very you can easily compromise yourself, and you don't seem to do that, which I think is really cool.
Speaker 2:Thanks. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I don't think it's a bad thing that people use AI. I don't have anything against anyone who's even writing, like, helping if it helps you write your tweets, like, that's good. It does help you logically progress through things and, like, come up with a better output a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:I just, like, maybe I'm I don't know. I'm, yeah, I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical still.
Arvid:And that is a great perspective to have. That's kind of what I meant. You have a spiky point of view, but it's it's not polarizing. Right? Of course, you can be skeptical.
Arvid:Right? And in a world where everybody is is chanting the the AI hype, you're trying to you're not completely against it, but you're careful with how it might be abused and how it might distort the conversation. It's really cool. So that's why I follow you. And that's, I think, why other people should be following you and your journey as well.
Arvid:So for people who wanna learn more about you, who wanna figure out where to find you, who wanna connect with you, maybe even use Postbridge and and build their own audience, where should they go?
Speaker 2:Honestly, just Twitter at jack fricks. And if you want to, like, basically know everything that I've figured out in the last, I don't know, year or so for building mobile apps and using my own tooling, Postbridge, I would just check my pinned tweet. There's a guide there. It's free. If you want to help growing on your organic socials, just tweet me.
Speaker 2:Do anything. I'll probably see it. So, yeah, that's it, really.
Arvid:Well, I appreciate you coming on and talking to me about your business and your perspective on social media. I really appreciate it. Really nice. Like, I I learned a couple things today that I never thought about before. So I'm I'm really appreciative of your insight and your perspective.
Arvid:Thanks so much, Jack. That was awesome. Thank you. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to The Bootstrap Founder.
Arvid:You can find me on Twitter at avid k a h a r v I d k a h l. And if you wanna support me in this show, please share podscan.fm, my SaaS business, with your professional peers and those who you think will benefit from tracking mentions of their brands, their businesses, and names on podcasts out there. Podscan is a near real time podcast database with a stellar API. We have 32,000,000 podcast episodes in their bag now. The database is humongous.
Arvid:Please share the word with those who need to stay on top of the podcast ecosystem.
Creators and Guests
