BootstrFM

Everyone welcome to another episode of BootstrFM 9 already. Um, we're into the double digits there. It's going to be very soon next week. Um, but for this episode , we have been searching for a, a guest like we do every week it's been a while, and we were unable to find one. Um, now I don't quite know who wouldn't want to be on this show. No, no, no, seriously, uh, it seems like it was a very difficult day for, uh, for the people , we tried to invite for this week, then Dom and I decided to just, be a little bit different. We are having an open segment. Often that much go in depth, first of all, ourselves, and also don't give the stage to others, we felt, you know, depending a bit on the episode, but a bit of more of an open episode, I suppose, a more intimate episode. So, here we are. I think that's a, that's a good experiment. And, um, Dom, are you recovered from your jet lag yet?

I have not. For those of you, um, actually , we started Bootstr together in Bali. So we are always in the same time zone, actually same [00:01:00] location, but now, um, I have kind of like just, uh, leaving Erwin, and I've been now, in Brazil for the last four days. Florinapolis, this really beautiful, I guess it's an island or it's a peninsula. I'm not a hundred percent sure. It's kind of dreamy island in Brazil. Some people claim it's a bit like Bali. And I have not really recovered from my jet lag yet, it's honestly been a bit rough being said. I'm doing something completely insane. I actually just saw, uh, Adrian from SimpliAnalytics also tweeting about it.

Completely revamped my, uh, usually , I'm schedule of waking up extremely late not extremely late, which I always, I get to me being productive at night. Honestly, the first time in my life, early. And the only way for me for this by utilizing like these times of issues, because that's the only way I can train to like get up early. So the past three days waking up at like six. I don't know, for you, some of you might sound like super lazy, you're all like early risers. But for me, it's like the [00:02:00] earliest I've ever woken up since high school, where I was forced to do it. And honestly, it's, it's going great. I still do not feel a hundred percent today.

It hurts me in the morning. But so what I also do into that is I'm taking cold showers, which actually help. It just sucks to be honest, but this is the only way I get my brain to be like ready ish. How is it going for you, Erwin? How have you been? And then second, when are you waking up?

I've been doing very great since you left here. Yeah, in December for me, it was barely any, um, and mostly focusing on myself, going to the gym, eating a bit more clean, all the things to do for the new year. I was like, I might as well start in December. But I haven't been working as much as I wanted to ties into when I wake up as well. Normally my internal clock that is at 7. 30 sharp. Um, reason I think I got a little lazy in December, which never happened to me in my life before. 9. 30 or sorry, 7. 30 sharp. But yeah, so it's a bit odd. I am [00:03:00] trying to move that back half an hour, but, I suppose I'm a late riser too, 6. 30 is, um, And half the startup people that are in our bubble would be waking up at 5 a. m. Because, you know, grind. But then again, I know so many other friends, you know, build startups and stuff, um, that straight up wake up at what, 1 or something and then they work until 3 a. m. Almost everyone does freedom in a different way.

Yeah. I want to talk about this because I have been under the impression that if I don't wake up early, I will never be able to live. And everyone around me was always early riser. And I was the only one waking up like eight. Cause I mean, I used to go to bed like at 1 a. m. ish. Sometimes even four, which, well, it is what it is and that was just between, I guess like 11, to like 3:00 AM I was just so productive and creative and I never wanted to get up, you know, and then I've had soap with people and everyone was like, oh, like I wake up also like inadvertent was wake up at like 10, 11:00 AM [00:04:00] sometimes feeling really bad and then like twos, like randomly talking about this issue.

With Pieter Levels, and he literally told me, like you just said, I'm not sure if it's still doing, but like waking up at 2pm and then taking hours to just like be alive and then he starts working same thing, like until like 3, sometimes even 5am and I mean, that's where Pieter is, I guess. And like the moment he told me this, I was like, Oh, so I guess like my, sort of like different sleeping schedule is that I really admire, like, up so early because it must be really Bali, especially where everything revolves around morning, right? This is something I want to get back into when I'm in Bali because, like, the morning seems to be the most glorified thing that's happening in the morning. And, um, so there's a lot of, like, more people in the gym because everyone's here, so that's a bit of a thing you have to think about. But, Erwin, how's your Tailscan going? Do you want to share a bit about, like, any news [00:05:00] you're satisfied? Yeah. Some things that aren't.

Both, I suppose I have it to make sure every Tailscan even is. It's my product now for, what is it? 14 months, give or take 14 months. It's a browser extension that lets you edit any website. Technology is with Tailwind CSS, but these do not actually need some knowledge about Tailwind CSS. There's an entire interface that lets you. It's any website without, so that's what I'm building. And, I launched version after a year, which was November, and that went great. I accepted one time purchases and that went very well versus subscriptions.

I kind of want to pivot the product itself to just do one time payments versus subscriptions. I guess in the end, it makes a bit more sense and so I've been focusing on changing the pricing a little bit. The bad news is that the months as an effect, yes, extra revenue from one time purchases, but I do, uh, my churn metric is like going down. Quite crazy. Um, was minus 5 percent [00:06:00] and this month was minus 3 percent as far. We're seven to the month, so it's. At the same time, I guess it is, you're switching from a model to a one-off payment. So it's a bit of, yeah, I'm not sure

Hmm. Do you, just to clarify, it's 4% churn. Do you mean it's 4%, but it's been going like it's 4% right? It's not minus four. 'cause minus 4% churn would plus churn, no, like less churn. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, you're right. The growth statistics are based on the monthly recurring revenue. So December was percent, monthly recurring revenue and month up until now was 3%.

I wanted to bit because this is like, for those of you, um, who don't know what I've been working on a tool called Helpkit. Helpkit. Which turns Notion pages into a presenter. So basically you write your entire articles in Notion and then you can use Helpkit, turn it into like a fully [00:07:00] hosted professional website. It's like made for like help center stuff, has some like analytics and stuff. Helpkit's growth has been really well for like, say like the past three years straight, but for like three and uh, three months ish, like I have seen very, very low growth up until the point where one month of like negative growth, which is a trend that scared, like scared, obviously the shit out of me, I never experienced it.

And after, like what that did to me is that, honestly, I guess, is that because like this for the first time it's going like, I guess I got extremely discord, which is like really, I guess a bad, it's a bad mindset to put yourself in as a founder. I guess be more happy, more pumped to actually get up again. But for me, it was the complete opposite. I got super depressed. Like my business is gonna die. Um, like despite the metrics aren't really showing, it just discouraged me so much to see like next and it took, I guess, two months to get out of that slump and get, [00:08:00] try to fix it again. Like, I never found myself in. First time that like, I'm in this like slump, I guess, needing it. And I actually did a lot about like other SaaS businesses that find them sort of stagnant growth and it turns out there's a lot of data for this. Kind of be made to be normal. It's not about this and maybe it pertains to you as well.

There seems to be some, first of all, like revenue, like milestones were kind of can occur the first one. Always around the like two, three K there's one at 6. 5 K one between 12 and 15 dollars MR, which is where I am right now in, and then one at like around, I think 25. Um, this data was, I think, done by the guys that like started up the rest of us at Roblox.

Um, and like, I found this really cool because, first of all, learning about all of this gave me, a bit of a mind, kind of knowing that it is normal to see, I guess, also negative growth. It's just part of the SaaS. Life, versus like one time recurring payments. But also [00:09:00] is that it for the first time, like there's a, there's a quote Paul Graham, but if you find yourself in like negative or like stagnant, you kind of have to reinvent your entire product. You have to start from zero in terms of like market position channels, which I don't a hundred percent believe in. There's a lot of other things you should do. Um, besides I'm like going back and start from zero or square root one. And now this is the point that you mentioned re tech. So like what I've been starting to do is like for the really rigorously look into the data, look at like actually happening, right?

Is this a problem? Is it retention? You know, if you have, obviously retention is a big problem and then like, also, what can you do to keep people? And I wonder like for you, if you're experiencing as well, What is there that you can do to keep people product, right? And that's the first thing, like really important. It's like people, when they churn, why they churn. Something, honestly, I never had in myself. What I just did is people churned their subscription and then I would send them an email and all [00:10:00] imagine this. Like the reason these emails is extreme, like to the point that I got like even more.

It's usually just founders that respond how much of a pain it is to get answers and so what I, um, kind of like a week is I essentially just made a forum that whenever you click on the cancel button, you have to, it's very, very simple. It's not, but it literally is there to. Why did you churn? Is it, um, are not using the product you found a cheaper or it's just the fact you put your own service, all these kinds of stuff. And then what would you like, why, why did you churn this? I only had like churn so far that the, where the implemented the, um, the deform. It helped me so much because I saw like why the guy, I feel like it's great not to have in your product. I just thought about actually to put it there. So do you Erwin, do you have a churn and do you people force to do it? What's your opinion about it?

Well, I'm kind of surprised at that before, but now I realize I don't think you use, do you use Stripe? Because Stripe checkout [00:11:00] already, when you cancel, what's the issue?

So here's the thing. I use Paddle, Paddle doesn't do that. Right. And I have talked to a couple of people that are using Stripe. Apparently the cancellation, the form that Stripe kind of presents is not that really hard to get people to, I don't know, there's something, but this Stripe churn feedback from that is. So for me, I

can, I can tell you, it's great the feedback thing from it, and you know, maybe I'm, I dig into a specific niche that is more honest select, right? I can imagine B2C being potentially dishonest just to get a form out. But that form is accurate in terms of what they said versus what they say in a conversation after. And I have a golden tip for you. This is one of those things where I, one of those moments where I have a very big statistic, um, I increased the amount of feedback from customers that churn by 1500%, 15 times, um, by removing one character. There is a typo in my email subject that are [00:12:00] just checking, do you have some feed scan just after they churn, but the just is without the U, it's JST. And so everyone responds thinking it's a private, that I actually type myself, and lots of feedback most of the time I even have conversations back and forth.

And they all point out that they're in my email, you know, like talk around them, um. But yeah, you get 15 times as much responses when you have a subject. All it costs you is a little bit of ego because you know, who likes a typo in their email?

I love this. I love the thought about this when I wrote my churn email ago, but then I, like you said, I was like, I don't want to have a typo. Right. It just seems unprofessional. But on, if I think about it, if people already churn, it's there to lose. Yeah, I don't, I don't get a response.

I don't, yeah, I don't care if it's unprofessional. Um, but he left, right? So, you know, it's a bit of a harsh statement, of course, but, you know, feedback is extremely crucial. And to answer your question that you asked in the middle, before, to churn for [00:13:00] me, when it's onboarding, and the ability to get help whenever you do actually need it is also a bit tricky. Um, so yeah, onboarding is a big right now. I'm writing a lot of knowledge base and help articles. I don't know, there's this product called, what's it again? Helpkit. So yeah, I've put articles on there. And that's going to be from the product to their touch points, say specific features that you can use in a, as you know, it has to help, uh, for example, and then you click through and you go into the specifically that functionality.

I would not advise anyone to do this when you are just launching a product or you're getting out there or testing the waters and stuff like that. Thing that you want to optimize for after say, I don't know, 50 customers, a hundred customers. That's start to matter a little bit before that for most products anyway, uh, having extremely elaborate help documentation is not necessary. But so that's what I'm doing. The other thing, what I'm doing is making sure that there is enough Touch side of the product. So say, making more free content around in my case and then sending that through email [00:14:00] once, making sure the newsletter is a bit more frequent. Basically reminding customers that do own Tailscan or Liption and, uh, and what you can, I've been thinking about live editing sessions as well.

So yeah, those are the things just to stay more relevant, I suppose, for your customers, as you can do.

Right, right. If anyone of you wants to chime in on the left, there's like this, um, voice I can get, and I think it would lead you to like a request permission state or something, and then, you know, I can get you on stage and have you on the, have you on the stage asking questions.

Um, One thing when, when it comes to this, cause I saw this also on, on X, someone should I force someone to go through a churn or should I not? And I'm like, same idea with your, yes, of course you should force them. I guess, like, if you, if it's a forum, please do what you have to do to like, I do draw a line when it comes to this case of like, um, If anyone of you doesn't know, um, I'm not sure what company it was. I think it's when they got [00:15:00] acquired. They just, um, well, it didn't let people churn anymore. They, you have a call, like an actual physical phone number, call with this guy, Brian, and then tell him why you want to churn, which obviously that's a big, um, but other than that, I would encourage founders to just force their feet to someone to churn because circling back to the, to what I was talking, trying to find out of like a stagnant slum. I think honestly, in the beginning, it felt like finding a needle in a haystack. There are so many things can possibly improve, or you're always like questioning, where should I start? And like is to be made that I would say one, which I think like, luckily I saw it in a way, but didn't do enough.

It's like getting insights, like analytics insights from the very product, because especially what they do, starting stage, right? Do they, like, do they fulfill all the questions, all the steps you deem to be. Like the, for a customer to be fully using it, but that doesn't exist it's very nowhere to [00:16:00] start, right? So like Erwin installation, onboarding is a really, really big thing. I noticed the other day is that, um, so a year ago, I have a seven day free trial, right? So it only makes sense to also feed people onboarding email sequence. So you have a, have like 5% people like ideas about like card. Also provide them and reach out to me. Get like a custom on for this, but like send them an email and my drip campaign. Erwin, are you doing the email onboarding email sequence and stuff?

Yes, a little bit. I do have to be honest here, there's one thing that I find more difficult than writing tweets and writing blog posts and that's, uh, I am not good at that. So, yes, I do have a small email. Uh, yes, I should also. Definitely much more.

That's There's a website called goodemails. com, I guess. I'm not sure about the TLD. There is some like libraries out there, sort of, you know, like these like landing page aggregators, but there's one specific [00:17:00] emails, so maybe that helps as well to check out and recall the exact name right now. I think it's pretty good, that helps. But yeah, that's interesting thing. Point I wanted to ask you, Erwin, since this is a thing, um, you recently Full time indie hacking, right? Share a little bit about like how that is going for you. Like, do you live in fear? Do you confident, um, that you're a, like software consultant on a freelance because you always can't do that. So probably you're really, really, really worried, but like, I'm curious, full time indie hacking.

Yeah, weird in a way, but so I had the goal of reaching $2, 000 mRR, and I hit that, what is it? Oh, I remember as well. So that does cover of, uh, you know, basic cost of living. And it also it helps me, You know, at least taper off a little bit of freelance work. So what I did was I simply stopped accepting any new for begin with and I can't say that I am full time. I do still have two [00:18:00] maintenance contract as a freelancer, and I think I will be having those for a while long. Just as an extra safety net, and it costs me maybe two or three days a month, so, always good and well. Does defy me from the label full time.

Unfortunately, but always good I have is that making one time payments versus recurring that I'm going through in the next couple of months. I'm since that amount of revenue I'm going to decrease, but increase, and that I can continue doing this.

Great to hear. I think it's important that you keep kind of like your safety, um. There's safety measurements in place, money, cause we all know like it, it just, if you have to struggle for money, it just the, just your creative in general, what you do. Interestingly, I think, when it comes to as an indie hacker, there's always like two thoughts that obviously it's like, do not start a project when you sort of like access cash, safety buffer, just be horrible for you and you were just, but then there's also another case to be made where, um, there's like this famous case of like Andre Aceimo, [00:19:00] who, like, if you don't know, like, basically started from nothing, went to Bali, tried, like, he lived there on like, like sticks and stones, basically, for months in this product, which eventually he also like, Had like a good amount of like, buffer again.

And he was literally just finding a single day and then it was and I feel like that's, I guess like a pro for sometimes also embracing the struggle a bit, but then again, like I feel like safety at least so that you know that you can, so everything goes down the drain for a few months. I think that's important. And I have just recently also kind of did that as well. I put just a bit of like a cash buffer. If really shit hits the fan, I'm just, you know, covered for like any sort of like emergency stuff, you know.

On the case of Andre in particular, I can confirm, you know, the marketing side of things, it's be able to say, you know, I came from nothing and built. I would say it is a bit, you know, the day to day reality of it is definitely. [00:20:00] Much than that it sounds like I was here, in the period I saw Andre on a couple of low instances when I think it was sheets to sites and also the alarm for Mac book, it was going very well for him, um, at some point, but before that, you know, things are tough, right?

Like you, a lot of money. There's a lot of pressure on you and that's something that I think people too quickly sometimes your business decisions, your strategies for a product are also roughly on how much risk you can carry. So if you do have to make a risky then you not do it and so you might act do the wrong what's good for your product based on your own personal financial situation. And so, yeah, I recommend anyone to don't indie hacking when it is, when your product making sufficient amount of money. As a matter of fact, I purchase scraping. You know, I'm walking, if you'd ask me. So for the last year while building Tailscan, I think the amount of liquid.[00:21:00]

That I had on my bank, three to five, hovering around there and then the amount of money that went out was the same that went in. And it was part of Tailscan. It was partially from freelancing, but really, you know, on the edge, I don't recommend anyone doing that, it's too stressful and some, so yeah, going full before you're profitable, I would say, because it is going to be, um, it's even a personal mental level, right? Like yourself to a lot of stress and strain.

Yeah, I totally hear you. I'm all honestly very about how with how little cash we did winked it I like, you know, like in, in whole like financial education people just have like six months of like paying costs of runway to like just do anything and you are sort of having it but sort of. So I have a little respect for that.

My luck is really, my luck was also that I know that if things really go south, this is a good thing to mention. If things [00:22:00] really go south, So if things go south for me and, you know, my product would literally, I don't know, like, producing a price, right? Like all of a sudden you have to pay 42, 000, like if such a catastrophic thing and my product would basically be done for overnight. Um, Plan B would be making a couple of phone calls and going to consultancy back in the Netherlands, I would be able to put a job within a week or so and I'd be settled. So having some peace of mind with a very solid Plan B, something that you can do to reduce that, you're still ramping up a product, working, but not quite there yet.

I feel like I don't have, like, I don't really kind of backup in that regard, I've never, for those of you, when I start, when I did, so I basically I'm 27 now, started IndieHacking like three years ago, especially with Helpkit. Basically, I was doing my bachelor's and then my master's degree studying. And while I was doing my degree, the only thing I wanted to do, or it's like I wanted to have my own rather profitable SaaS business, so I don't have to actually go out and be an employee for someone. [00:23:00] And so what that all means is that I've never had an actual job work for someone except one internship, didn't like it.

And so for me, you know, I don't even have had any freelance experience. I guess that would always be a fault too, because programming, I'm designing, I know my stuff, but I never really considered that regard. Maybe I should at one point, but I do have now some, some access safety buffer on the side. Hopefully that will work and really shit hits the fan. I can just strap, I don't know, something else. If it was burned down for help kit, which I hope, I can build something that, that generates for you, but yeah, still, I agree having also just Erwin as a side note, checking out the comment section and it looks like, I couldn't hear for the first 15 minutes, bug in mobile, unfortunately I can't hear anything. I know you reached out to the Twitter, this guy, has he come back with any sort of.

No, as a matter of fact, I respond. So I have a feeling that may have fired another round of people because, well, I fear the [00:24:00] worst. But, uh, I suppose that's something that I'll look into. Any case, if you are, and you can't hear us, then rejoining. This is funny because you hear me, but, uh, well,

right. Let's move on. I have another question for you. Also, like we haven't seen each other in a while. So I have been noticing you've been to the gym quite frequently. That and Erwin. Miss Lee succeeded in his bet, which is because I didn't get 500 bucks, but because he has some gains, is that going, how would you say, is it helping you stay focused because in the hacking super, does it help you?

Yeah. So this is, this is cool because I'm in the kind of the unique position before, after, it's always, you know, in my mind I was like, oh yeah, working out. Yeah. But I never really. Right. And it's, uh, it's not like I'm in denial of the importance. I know it's obvious, you know, when you're health physically, then, you're Work and stress your marketing, you know, mental trouble, turbulence, et [00:25:00] cetera. It's just great for, et cetera. Now, all these things are very true and, I am denying this. But so it was the moment I was still not really about it too much. You know, there's this, and this is actually a great thing to zoom in on later. There's this thing where, when you know something and you know that it is good, right, but somehow you're just, not it. The same counts as the same counts for me building in, in public. Like I always knew, yes, I need more. Yes. I should be doing marketing. Um, building products quickly rather than a year and then failing. I knew all these things, right. It has been told over and over. It's common knowledge yet somehow you still do not.

So with fitness is the same thing, that bet kind of helped me over the edge and the other side where I am starting to get a little bit. How do you say Great, I guess is the right word. Um, a bit less, a bit with some brain fog, I guess. When I hit the gym for two or three days again, so for me right now, yeah, it's a great way to release, a great way to break [00:26:00] up a day. It's a great way to take care of myself a bit more. And it has also rolled me a couple of other things, right? Like healthy eating, right? The moment that you start going, start becoming much more hungry because the calories are few. And, uh, he is in need of other nutrients much more. And so, yeah, the hunger feeling for me significantly.

It has led me down to Educate more on how to eat, for example, right? Not that I was eating single day, but, becoming a little bit more on what is nutritious, what is not all those things I feel like, um, has done me a great service and I feel like it's very typical of when you turn roughly 30, I'm 31 now. It's quite typical. So yeah, if you're there, if you're younger, I don't know, if you're older, you matter, and you feel like, you know, that's a good thing. You just don't do it. I really advise to just dip your toe into it and try to somehow hold yourself accountable for a little while. It is built wonders.

Erwin, I know, loves a particular pizza chain that you kept an order, so you, like, [00:27:00] I'm happy to hear that you also, nice, nice. I'm pumped when I go back and I see, I'm honest, like, I'm shocked, like, on the progress that you made. Yeah, so I did a,

I did a measurement two months, I have added, into, seven kilograms into, and, uh, almost five kilograms of that is muscle and two kilos of fat, so.

If I find out that you secretly injected Serone, I'm gonna kill you.

Nope. No, no, so I should be sharing this a bit more on Twitter, I suppose, but no, for sure, absolutely not. Wait, what? No, no, no, no, no. The only thing that I'm taking is protein shakes, just to hit the pro and then And adding some peanut butter in, some extra calories. And then besides that supplement that I'm using, that's creating, which has been over and over and over and over again for the last 50 years to be safe. Not doing anything. It's just to push out more energy at one source. So that's the only thing that's, yeah, that's what I'm going to stick by as well.

I think honestly like talking about the whole concept [00:28:00] revolves around Foria, right? Inertia because what if you, it's very, to get into the habit of doing things once you're, it's very sort of like easy to stay in these habits, but getting slump just like going and starting hardest thing to do once you get going, but like to get to that point is really, really hard. And it's also, I think, comes in seasons like sometimes you just. You just feel more like you want to actually do stuff and be healthy. And then sometimes you just want a product and like focus on it. But I think like what has proven for me to be like healthy, it's just, even if you don't doing physical work, you should do it because so many times when you feel a little bit depressed, nothing is going forward, if you do some exercise.

You will see that the word looks completely different and you are actually pumped to like tackle things again. I cannot stress this enough, like how important that is. How many times I felt a bit down, I come back and then all of a sudden, life's get 70 percent better, obviously not a hundred, but like significantly better. [00:29:00] And out here, it's really interesting in Brazil for us. Um, I wanted to get, to start working out again in a gym. Here in Brazil, to kind of get any sort of track, you need to have a fiscal number. See, and since I don't have one, um, it's practically impossible for me to, any sort of like gym contract here.

So with that for the first time in my life, I kind of have to give, like lifting weights, which I love. I want to like, like a monkey for like an hour a day. So I started calisthenics. And boy, my assumptions about that were completely wrong. First is that you cannot build muscle, which after like one research Oh, that's absolute bull.

You can get ripped, Dom from Calisthenics alone. Yeah. As a matter of fact, that's what I did in November for a month before going to the month.

Oh yeah, and the second one is, I always was on, you know, like weightlifting. It's really like lifting a lot of heavy weights and it's really hard. Calisthenics, man, this is like hardest thing I've ever done. It's so exhausting and you [00:30:00] like, you definitely, like, you know, you're typically gym pump calisthenics. Definitely something I encourage to try out if you don't have the luxury of like around you.

Yeah. And it's, it saves money. It saves you have to the gym, but it's also much easier to get started, right? Like your podcast right now, this space, you're like, well, just like Erwin, I knew that I should be, you know, being, but I'm not, and I know that's good for me thing. After this. This space, say after half an hour from now on, Dirtshop and Calisthenics YouTube video for half an hour. I guarantee you the rest of you're gonna be slightly more tired, slightly more excited, and much more with clear focus. Why not?

I like how this Indie Hacker direction is going. Maybe I should be starting to sell a course.

Hmm. Indie hacker Lifestyle. Indie Hacker Lifestyle is just drinking Coke, eating chips, and coding, [00:31:00] which, I mean, I've been there, but definitely not the way to go.

Well, I mean, it's great for a day, honestly.

Yeah, I agree. It's great for a day. Yeah, it is just fires down. One last thing I wanted to talk to you about, I've noticed that you've been working on it for a while, but then it kind of stopped and then you're doing it again, how is that going? You're working on something in the AI, exciting, exciting. Um, well, I want to talk a little bit about that before we wrap it up.

Yeah. So this is funny because something that I told myself not necessarily to talk about on Twitter and why in a second. So there's another building for say five, six months on and off. It really just started as a bit of, it's something that is, teching, not necessarily crazily, you know. New or difficult. Um, but the distribution of the whole thing is, and so, you may be able to draw some inspiration from this positioning wise, this is something I've never done, but know can be [00:32:00] extremely profitable.

The second product I'm working on is a product called LexBoost, and Lex is the Latin law, so you can read it as law boost. And this is a Essentially another AI wrapper. It is an AI wrapper that is trained on million public verdicts that are Netherlands. From say criminal stole a, a criminal indie hacker stole a can of coke because he couldn't find enough MRR. He gets a verdict, right? Um, get sent off to, to jail for it. That verdict is publicly available in the Netherlands. Who sends her the last name? In most cases, it's all available, uh, with all the metadata, which location, et cetera. Now, so the AI is trained on that. And for the MVP right now that contains about, uh, 10 million vectors. But if we scale this up all the way to like every properly index, we're going to be hitting about, what is it? I think it's going to be roughly around the billion vectors mark. Which is on, uh, we're talking about scale is quite, um, but yeah, so I've been prepping the infrastructure for that.

We're trying to get the MVP [00:33:00] out for distribution. What this product does, because it's a, uh, what it allows you to do as a lawyer, simply use it and search and say, okay, every single verdict about this. Give me every verdict that this has made because I am in someone in court next week, but this is a case and I want to know what this judge is double to. Now, normally these kinds of things are done by a legal. Um, and it takes about one or two in a month of research, one or two weeks of research, and it's an entire memo bag with tons of information that they can use in court. AI can literally just, and just make memos and ends in, and you can literally ask it what approach it within a matter of minutes, part is lawyers are hella rich.

So are probably roughly around the 200 per user month mark. And some of these law for 500 up to a thousand lawyers. So if you do the math, that is going to be. Great. Now, the reason that I'm so open about, 'cause I am pretty confident that anyone listening would never be able to compete for two reasons. It's a Dutch, [00:34:00] if you do not, you cannot actually build it, specifically this. And then the other side of it's for lawyers and be able to sell that to lawyers. I have a, who is a lawyer and has a lot of contacts in the Netherlands. Then this is the reason why I would be able to pull something like this out and it's very not beneficial for me in public.

Because it's a little bit boring, maybe a little bit bland, actually not good for marketing. I mean, there's no lawyers and then going, Oh, I'm interested. So there's no upside for me to do that necessarily. I'm like, but, yeah, there we go. And so if you're hearing this in. You know, your thing, everything's already being built by AI. Everyone's being, you know, what's there left to build being in the gold rush right now. And my answer is niche. Pick something that you can contribute to more than, than other via, you know, having a co founder or having prior knowledge about a specific, be a plumber in a previous life, you know, plumbers, other technical person, probably in that case, and then potentially slap another niche, a language. Be more specific it means that [00:35:00] people cannot compete and charge much more money.

If we keep, like, let's say like three months, we see like a helicopter or like a yacht flowing behind you, you're like smiling, please don't forget us, Erwin, you know, like from the beginning. You know what,

I will be taking this exact space right now. So anyone in here is welcome to, in case it happens.

Nice. I love that. I love that idea. Um, certainly something that I think, especially in SaaS businesses, some sort of localized business can really work well. Um, yes, it all just boils down. If you do want to do, it's like the product founder fit idea, right? Because like, I'm originally from Austria. Um, so there's like a whole, you know, area, region, like Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Potentially I could build products in. But to be really, really honest, do I really want that sort of target audience? I really don't know because it's proven in the past that it's just German speaking customers are really, really hard. It's just a pain in the ass. Um, and I'm one myself. [00:36:00] So I know how like rigorous and like how, um, risk sometimes we are in terms of like minimally think to work a hundred percent.

There's like a hundred things you want to, from the get go, you know, that I get here to, even though it's just practically, so picking your poison is that important for me. I just, I can't even just dealing on that on a daily basis. It's something I kept thinking about doing because the potential is there, right?

Uh, it's such a big market and, but like, yeah, that's just maybe one day. I have a team that takes care of it, my friend. Um, but if I have to deal with like the audience, like Germans, I will probably kill myself. And I'm one of them to say this. Um, if you ever had a SaaS, yeah.

Dom, since I'm Dutch, right? From the Netherlands, we're basically Germans. I guess language wise, but far off, same thing with the customers. But for me, having a co founder dealing with that and the distribution, that massively helps. Um, then on [00:37:00] the other side, I would like to know a double niche doesn't have to be the niche language.

That's one way to double niche, but you have a niche in say, I'm go, you know, I have a housing platform. That's specifically for, in a specific pricing segment, for example, I have a, You know, it's a very common problem to have, so for, uh, about this is actually, it would be a very complex, photo editing software.

Uh, Figma is a quite difficult, well, not difficult, complex designing program. It's a brand studio. It is much simpler version of that, that, you're 80 percent of those things and then after that, What did the, studio did was specifically focus on startup founders and people in the SaaS business, in the product space. So that is also a double niche where you take an existing solution, you end simplify a niche. In a way, you're removing more complicated in favor of just as more [00:38:00] simplistic product. Then you distribute it to a specific audience. That's also a dope. It can work very well. And our export.

I like that. True. It doesn't have to be language only. But I was saying, I totally understand your German customers. Our main customers are in Germany and Switzerland. Well. So I'm talking about, if you ever had like a German for an invoice number, like an inbunno, the pain you're going down, because you haven't heard about in your entire life, startups now that make German market specific, like Stripe, iConnectors to like create PDFs, compliant for like German speakers.

So it's a whole niche, also another niche, you know, I had Vlad telling me that I can join a gym with no fiscal number in Brazil, a recommendation. That's actually good to know. You also says going to there five to six times a week. That's a lot of work out. Probably your business is off really well, given the amount of exercise. Um, [00:39:00] it's been great. I really like talking to you, like open format, Erwin. It's like, but having other people's opinion in the end. Also, I feel like the, like every time we talk, you know, I go into the talk, a lot of expectations, but every time I leave, I'm kind of pumped to implement the stuff we talked about.

And, I don't know, unfortunately, people wanted to actually Join today, which is fine, it just be like that, if any one of you, you join, uh, like in the next, next couple of sessions, or ask our guest speakers a question, please do it. Twitter is a bit buggy, but we're way out.

Yeah, I will be contacting the person again from Twitter and I also honestly think that, hostster account is great, cause it's simply the host and you know, it can't disc easily. So that's nice. Same time. I think it is a bit of, um, so yeah. fermenting in public here and suppose for the greater good, making mistakes and learning things for anyone else in your space later. If ever, we know. It's, uh, [00:40:00] I think it's a good time to wrap up. Next week for everyone, next week, we have a guest, certainly don't want to miss, and a conversation you certainly don't want to miss. I'm not gonna tell you who yet but you definitely want to be there.

That's all. And talk to you too and catching up. And, I also make notes for the next few, uh, few days for my, based on this conversation. That's great as well make typos. Yeah, definitely.

Tell it to too many people. Otherwise people will see it.

Don't internet. Yeah, exactly. No, no, no. Don't, don't do typos. Really bad for engagement. wink.

Yeah, I think we should wrap, wrap set, but there's gonna be another talk soon. As Erwin said, we can't, who gonna have on, but, it's, we can mention this next week gonna be, we can mention next week,

next week, Wednesday. Alright, everyone have a good night. Morning. All right. Wherever you are. And, uh, catch you on the next [00:41:00] one.

Bye bye, guys. Happy shipping. Happy bootstrapping.