Ep 16: Bootstrapped Web Update

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You'll see a huge team. Maybe 10% of the members of the team are actually really excited, really hyped about using AI, using cloud code and using all these things. The rest of them are sort of grumbling, sort of slow. They sort of like the old way of doing things, you know, very natural. But, you know, it's not really about like replacing developers. It's like, guys, we can move. We can build so much more, you know. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to the offsite podcast. I am your host, Jordan Gahl. This is where I team up with friends to catch up on our work and just as importantly, what's going on beyond the work. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Rosie, the AI powered phone answering service for small businesses. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Hey, here we are. It's. We're back. It's bootstrapped web back for our. Our biannual update episode. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Yes, we're back. [00:00:48] Speaker A: What's up, Jordan? [00:00:49] Speaker B: What's up, man? [00:00:49] Speaker A: Great to see you. Yeah, yeah, you too. We were just catching up and. Yeah, I'm psyched about this, dude, me too. [00:00:56] Speaker B: End of the year, I got a few days left. I'm heading out on Sunday, so today, tomorrow, Friday, and then done for the year. I'm gonna really try to unplug. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I always try and I always fail to unplug. But I. I actually just got back from a little December trip, just me and Amy. We went down to Costa Rica. So that was like our break, our pre holiday break. And now, now we're gonna. I'm still pushing, of course, but. But we're gonna try to keep it, take it easy for the rest of December here. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Nice. I heard you do the walk and talk type of a recording in Costa Rica. How is that break? I have not been there before. It sounds great. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. It's actually our second time there. We were there like 15 years ago and actually the same area of Costa Rica, near the Quepos area. And yeah, it's a good time. We stayed right by the beach. We also stayed by Manuel Antonio National Parks. We did some nice hiking, saw some crazy animals and jungles. So good for you. Good times. Yeah. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Well, I'm going less tropical on my break. I'm going to Washington D.C. but very much looking forward to it. My. My theme is more kindle, less phone. [00:02:01] Speaker A: I like it. [00:02:01] Speaker B: That's what I'm going in. And maybe this is a good place to start where it's not on business. I came across a book, I think I bought it a few months ago, but didn't have a chance to read it. And then I was in a bookstore buying, like, Hanukkah and Christmas gifts, and I saw it, so I picked it up and started reading it. It's a book called the Greatest Sentence Ever Written. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Oh, I heard about that. [00:02:24] Speaker B: It's lovely. [00:02:25] Speaker A: It's. [00:02:25] Speaker B: It's. It's Walter Isaacson. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah, Isaacson. Right. Yeah, right. [00:02:28] Speaker B: Of all the biography, fame. And it's about the. You know the sentence in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with their. By their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We're all familiar with the sentence, but what this book does is it breaks down every part of the sentence and gives the background on how it came to be, where it started in the original drafts, how it was changed, why it was changed, and the history behind each sentence. So I'm like, on an intellectual rabbit hole right now between Locke and Hume and Rousseau and how that leads to the founder. I'm like, this is exactly what I want to be focused on for the end of the year. Not the news and the tech industry and whatever else. [00:03:20] Speaker A: I love. I love that, like, early American history, like. Like the founding. And I'm always fascinated with, like, how they set up our system. And like, I mean, America was like the ultimate, like, startup, you know, like just experiment. A total experiment, right? [00:03:35] Speaker B: Yep. Blank slate that could have gone horribly wrong. [00:03:39] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:03:39] Speaker B: And miraculously was done as good as anyone has ever done it, actually. [00:03:44] Speaker A: And somehow we keep trying to fuck it up, but we keep it going, right? [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think part of the genius was the acknowledgement that we would try very hard to screw it up, because human nature does that. And how do you put these protections in place? So that's what I'm going into the end of the year trying to focus on. The X timeline is a horror show right now, an absolute horror show. And then you look over in your house and you look at your family and your kids, and things are so good. You're like, okay, how do I make sure that the last two weeks of the year are filled with more of that and less of the. I don't know, it's tough to tell. Is it the ugly truth? Is it reality? Is it a warped view of reality? Because we know things that we normally would not know? Whatever that combination of things is, there's a lot to be grateful for. So as much as we can focus. [00:04:36] Speaker A: On that, you're right about that. That juxtaposition of, like, you know, all the. What's happening in all over the world, it's. It's just a horror show out there. And. But a lot of that, I tend to tune out, and I feel like I. I start to realize like, how tuned out I am of, you know, like, world. World news. Because a lot of the news is, like, not even news anymore. It's just like sort of either a circus act or. Or just horrible. Right. But then. Then I'm at home. Like, we're going to basketball games. We're hanging out, we're reading, we're. We're taking trips. And, like, this is chill. [00:05:06] Speaker B: You know, it's like a very difficult question these days if it's better to know and be appalled and afraid or not to know and lean toward ignorance, but be happier and more able to focus on, you know, when I leave my house, it's pretty good. I go downtown, I get a coffee. I got a whole food. It's like, it's all good. I went to my middle daughter's concert last night. You know, you see a few hundred kids and all their families supporting them. They're up there. They're learning instruments. Like, it is good, good. Like, all caps. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So this has always been one of my favorite episodes that we do over the years. It's like the end of the year, the December. Yeah. We're talking. We're talking about, like, taking breaks, but I don't know about you. I'm always thinking about, like, all right. I really do think in terms of years, I look back on my career as, like, oh, I remember. I remember that year 2013. I remember 2018. That, like, I really. The numbers matter to me in terms of, like, the calendar years. So I do try to take this time. It's one of the only times I actually write to my personal blog these days is to do the yearly recaps and try to think strategically about the year ahead. But. Yeah. Should we get into it? [00:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And what we said could make sense for this episode is a little bit of 2025 review and then a little 2026 look ahead. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Yes, sir. And so I think that the last time, obviously, people might know us or follow us and stuff, but the last time they heard us on this feed, it was, what, like, six months ago? [00:06:34] Speaker B: So it must have been six months ago. [00:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, like, why don't we start with a little, like, look back? Like, what? Looking back on 2025, what's the first thing that comes to mind for you in terms of like the theme or the story for your, for your work life. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Very straightforward headline for me is that the pivot worked. That's it. The pivot to Rosie. Right. So 2024, we were in between Rally checkout product and transitioning over to Rosie. So full pivot, Cut the team from 25 people to six, scrap the old product entirely, shut it down, stop accepting new customers, let paying customers know that we were shutting down. They had X amount of time to get off. [00:07:17] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:18] Speaker B: And then starting a completely new product from the brainstorm phase, like which idea should we pursue? And then building and then launching to early customers. We launched to our first customers in September of 2024. So between September 2024 and December of 24 was our period of what is this thing? How do we get people to be interested? Who's the right customer profile? How do we find them? What happens when they sign up? Are they happy? So it was very early stage, first few months. And in those few months we did get positive feedback. We got some paying customers. We added a few cane and mrr. We started go to market between advertising and cold email and whatever else. And then January is when it hit January, we, I think we added maybe something like 5k in the month of January. And then February was 10 and then and so on. So in 2025 we added about 1400 paying customers and 1.5 million in ARR. [00:08:20] Speaker A: Hell yeah. [00:08:21] Speaker B: So that is faster than anything else that I have touched or started or anything else. So 2025, you know, the going back. [00:08:29] Speaker A: To Rally or actually say Carthook. Right. Like the comparison of this speed, the trajectory, because I know you had a pretty fast thing, not, not really fat. Like I think looking back years ago, it kind of took you a little while to figure it out, but then it went, right? [00:08:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So funny enough that there, there is an analogy there. It's not perfect because Karthik went from one product in an industry to a different product in the same industry. And this is completely different between Rally. But, but it's not that dissimilar in that we got a team together at Cardhook on one product and got to something around 10 to 15k in MRR after 12 or 18 months and then pivoted to a new product and then that new product within a year got to a million ARR. So there's something, there's some analogy there between the people, the trust built, the relationships, the trust required to pivot successfully and not kind of tear each other apart. And Then, yeah, Cardhook went. The checkout product at Cardhook grew really fast once it was up and running. That first year was kind of very painful because it took us a while to get the product working properly because it was very complicated. Checkout and payments and one click upsells and shopify integration that they didn't want to have all these things. This has been much more straightforward as an independent product that just kind of lives on the Internet on its own, doesn't have any dependencies around it other than infrastructure, no platform to integrate to. Right. You take your existing phone number, you forward it to your Rosie number. So it's definitely a lesson in there for us on the pro and con. I think vertical voice AI products are generally growing even faster and it's partly because they plug in to an existing ecosystem of integrations and products and CRMs and so on. And we have gone very into independent and I think we have the ability to grow much bigger because we span across industries. [00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's vertical voice, but it's like you're pretty much. Are you still horizontal now in terms of the type of customer that you're working with? [00:10:33] Speaker B: So right now, the end of this year is when we are turning toward what I have described as have my cake and eat it too, which is a horizontal product that can market itself to individual verticals in a very vertical. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Exactly. Different channels, different landing pages. [00:10:50] Speaker B: That's right. So you can come in, depending where you come in from, you can see it as Rosie's the best AI answering service for dog groomers. And you see an ad for dog groomers, you see a landing page for dog groomers, you get into the product and then you get put into the same horizontal product as everyone else, but it matches for you. And over the last four weeks, we've done our first integrations. So we've launched four integrations over the last four weeks and they are scheduling right calendly, Appoint Lit, Google Calendar acuity. So this is the beginning of our plugging into ecosystems and other products and so on. [00:11:26] Speaker A: Nice. [00:11:26] Speaker B: Yes. So 2025, you know, for me, the pivot worked. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Hell yeah. [00:11:32] Speaker B: How about you? 2025, you look back on it, what's the headline? [00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I had quite a pivot as well, but I really think of 2025 as well. So over, like, bigger picture, if I think back to like the last three years or so, I was, you know, anyone who's been following my story, I've been sort of like in the desert, sort of, sort of Exploring like, what is my next actual business, that I'm. That something that fits. That I. That fits my strengths, I think, but also something that also hits right. Like, I tried a bunch of different things. I sort of explored or thought or dabbled in different things, but nothing was quite, really sticking. So like early 2025, I launched Instrumentl Components, which was like a UI components product for Ruby on Rails and even like. And that sort of dragged on. I had wanted to launch that in 2024, but it dragged into early 2025. That did fine. Like it was. It felt good to sell something new again. And I think before that my. My last actual new product was Clarity Flow or you know, zip Message before that. But like, so it had been a few years. So it felt good to get like the shipping muscles and the selling muscles, like it was something new back, you know, back in action early in the year. But that was just. It just did fine in terms of revenue. Right. There wasn't like the action, there wasn't the heat behind it. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Yep. [00:12:53] Speaker A: Fast forward to, you know, you know, pretty quickly. I forgot exactly when we recorded our last episode on this, but like, I think it was June of 2025 is when I started to really pivot into building with AI. And this is something that, looking back on it, I had been thinking about and plotting that. Like, I think I need to get back to my roots as a teacher, as a creator, as someone who is definitely back into like building products, that craft of design and build building products, but also like talking and teaching and doing video and doing YouTube. So that's. [00:13:31] Speaker B: That's your special zone. [00:13:33] Speaker A: That's my thing that, that I. I had been pretty successful with that earlier in my career. And then I just let that go because I was sort of kind of had tunnel vision on the. On the whole SaaS dream kind of thing. But I knew that, that in 2025 I wanted to get back in that direction. But I had. I was sort of tied up in some consulting stuff. I was doing the instrumental components. I was doing this or that. I was still kind of doing things on Clarity Flow. And so it wasn't until like June of 2025 is when I finally said, like, all right, let's go, let's. Let's finally do the business that I. My gut instinct is like, the world is changing with AI. And that's especially, especially true. Like, we are the tip of the wave here in the software design and development industry. I think it's pretty clear that AI is actually changing the whole world. But it's still a little bit slow in terms of like the normies and the mainstream. But us here, those of us who are coding, like, I don't know about you, but the way that I build Software today is 100% different than it was like only 12 months ago. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know anyone whose entire world around software development has not changed completely in such a short amount of time. [00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:40] Speaker B: So that's an opportunity. [00:14:42] Speaker A: So what's interesting is like, on my YouTube channel, I knew I wanted to go in that direction of like creating, building an audience again. I wasn't exactly sure what direction to point that in. And I started pushing on YouTube even back in 2024, doing a lot of videos about Ruby on Rails, talking about the instrumental components and stuff, but that, you know, it sort of just didn't really do so well. 100 views, 200 views. I was sort of stuck around 2,000 subscribers. On my channel June 2025, I make the pivot to talking about building with AI. And it was sort of like overnight before then. [00:15:22] Speaker B: What was the topic of the YouTube videos? [00:15:24] Speaker A: Mostly Ruby on Rails. Okay. Interestingly, I did one video earlier, maybe March or April, about Ruby on Rails on AI, and that video did pretty well, but everything else not so great. And then in June, I started talking about like exclusively about like in general building with AI, not like, no longer focusing on Rails, just focusing on the industry of software development in general with AI, getting into cloud code, getting into Cursor, what it means for us as developers, talking about our workflows. And these, these videos started to really, really hit, going from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of views. [00:16:00] Speaker B: You know, did you find yourself focusing on like, not product reviews, but talking about how you're using an individual product like cursor? [00:16:08] Speaker A: I think one of the early hits was just, just a general video about, I think it was called like how Vibe Coding goes Pro. And that was when I started to identify the pattern of spec driven development. Basically emphasizing the planning phase first before you have your coding agents build off of the plan, but then shortly after that. And this is something that I was not expecting, not even planning, not strategically, no chess moves here, but I was sort of just hacking on my own workflow and learning and adapting how I'm starting to use AI. I'm getting excited about this idea of spec driven development that seems like a more professional, craftsmanlike way to build software. The tooling hadn't quite caught up to the idea of spec driven development, so I started hacking on this idea called Agent os, which is like a framework of basically commands and markdown files and some framework, like a framework that you can use on top of cloud code, on top of cursor, on top of whatever coding tool, tooling you're using. And the idea was that it would, it would help to help to systemize the training for your coding agents and give you some process get and really give you some structure around spec driven development. And at the, when I released that, which was June or July of 2025, the tools, first of all, the tools move so incredibly fast. Like there's a lot of stuff that, that we have today that wasn't even available three, four months ago. Like things like Plan Mode and Cursor and the current models like Opus. And that wasn't around yet. So that hit and like Agent OS hit and I released it as a free open source tool and it was really sort of like on a whim. At first I was like, this is just a tool that's going to help me build products faster. And then I did a YouTube video about it. That YouTube did something like 40,000 views in a week. And so. And the GitHub, my first ever free open source GitHub project, thousands of stars. And I'm like, what is happening? I don't even know how to manage a free open source project. Like, what, what's like, I'm. I'm asking like Adam Wathen and, and everyone's like, like, is this secure? What do you do with all these issues and PRs that people are submitting? Like what's happening? You know? So it took me a little while to, to just figure out that whole game. But that, that brought a lot of energy into my funnel. People coming into the YouTube channel. So June, July, it's only content. Like I know that I'm building an audience. I think I had started my website for builder methods.com and I started growing the email list. I start. I was like, all right, this is, there's some excitement here. Let me make sure I'm promoting the newsletter on every video. So I started doing that and then it was like September is when I started to actually sell something. The first thing was a live workshop. The first one was like $25 a ticket sold. I don't know, over 100 of those. And then by the end of September, I launched Builder Methods Pro, which is my membership subscription that's like the flagship product. And that started selling regularly basically right away. September, October, November, it's all been pretty solid. And then it's like what's really interesting there is that it's like the YouTube channel distribution channel actually works. There's probably an old viewpoint of YouTube that it's like, yeah, you'll get a lot of views, but are they really going to turn into customers or subscribers and like in, in this space? Like yes, they do. [00:19:38] Speaker B: They leave YouTube and go to your site and subscribe. [00:19:40] Speaker A: They go straight to the, to the email list and they become members of Builder Methods Pro. So that, you know, I really didn't expect to be in like the free open source software game. That's a, that's a new thing and actually today, this week I'm launching the second one of those that I'm calling Design os. Another sort of framework that helps with the process more on the, on the front end design side of the process with AI. I'm really excited about this one. I don't know if it'll have the same, you know, the same effect. [00:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah, tough to tell. [00:20:09] Speaker A: I've had a bunch of like early access surveys on it that are coming in pretty, pretty steadily. So really excited about that. And now I'm just going, you know, I'm working this funnel, I'm creating a ton of content, learning a ton about the YouTube game and video production and what it means to be a creator and a builder and a teacher again and just kind of bringing those muscles back into the game. [00:20:35] Speaker B: It's super interesting in terms of going with where the energy is in 2025. You know, I think both of us jumped on the bandwagon properly, rightfully, because that's where, that's where the gigantic Mississippi river of demand was. That's where things are going. I do think if there's any chess moves on your side to identify, it's that you avoided teaching the non developers how to vibe code and you stayed where you want to teach, which is people who are professionals but they want to get better, they want to catch up. This is. We were touching on this before we started recording. I want to ask you about it where, you know, for our product it's a traditional well of demand. It is. I'm running my dog grooming business, my solo law firm, my landscaping business and I just have my regular set of business problems. One of those problems is pretty painful around the phone. I miss leads when I'm closed. I don't want an answer. Like very kind of traditional pain point from where demand and then this new innovation comes out and there's a new form of supply. Right. The supply to the demand was Always voicemail, third party answering service, VA kind of. It was very stale. It's the only supply that could reach that demand. And then all of a sudden this new form of supply comes in. So almost very traditional software problem solution kind of thing. The only thing new there was that something new gets invented and now there's a new category. Great on your side. Where's the demand? Where's the problem? Where's the emotion? Is it to be ahead of everyone else? Is it to catch up with everyone else? Is it fomo? Like what is that driver of why people are so. Do they want to be awesome? Do they want to make a lot of money? Do they feel like they're getting left behind in their career? Where is it overall? [00:22:33] Speaker A: There is a massive wave, there's just no question about that. But then within that wave there are different, different flavors of it and I'm seeing all them. Like, like you said, I think since the beginning I've been a little bit more focused on, on speaking to what I think I, I call them like the professional developer. So you're already a Prof. You're already in this career. You're, you're probably a career developer, either working at a company or doing your own thing. But, but you're not hacking on the weekends. You're not a wantrepreneur, you are a professional builder. So one flavor of the, of the demand is adaptation. So I've been hand coding my whole career. I'm a full stack developer or I'm a backend developer or I'm a front end person and I've always done it by hand. But now that we have cloud code and now that these things are actually getting really good, I need to not only it's simple enough to just learn how to, how the tools work, you could figure out pretty easily like how to use cloud code. What I think most developers are need is like, yeah, but like how, how is this changing our workflow? How are we thinking differently about our process? The whole process of designing and creating and shipping and perfecting software is completely different. Now it's not obviously, it's, it's so much faster but literally the sequence of steps that we take is completely different when you're doing it with, with agents. So there's a lot of developers out there who are just like, well how do people do this? What are the little hacks that, the tricks of the trade, what. So that's part of where like agent OS comes into play. They're like, oh, this adds structure that I can plug in to my process, but also plug in with my team and get my whole team on board with agent os. I'm seeing a lot of that, like companies are using it. [00:24:18] Speaker B: My anecdote is that we've had a pretty significant amount of growth. We haven't hired anyone. We don't need to hire anyone. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. [00:24:25] Speaker B: And everyone's quite happy with this very small team and being able to be more efficient on their own and not, you know, there's no pressure from, there's cheerleading from management. I'm a cheerleader. I'm not. Well, if you can be more efficient, then I expect more and faster. It's just, it's almost entirely positive what I want to ask you about. [00:24:49] Speaker A: But, but like there's other, there's other like, flavors of the, of the demand too. Right? Like, there's also. There's definitely still a lot of people who, who do want to just start up new products, whether they're founders or startups. Yeah. [00:25:00] Speaker B: I wonder if your design side can combine so that you're seen as like, I can learn from this person to do the entire thing. [00:25:08] Speaker A: I think it will. Especially this new design OS product. It's really aimed at designing new products. But I know that members of Builder Methods Pro, there's definitely a big segment of them who are here to like, they're hacking on new startup ideas like MVPs and stuff. Then there's another level of it, which is the team element. And I've had a lot of like, sales calls with people and I'm starting to also sell these like, private team engagements. The main thing that I'm selling these days is Builder Methods Pro. That's the vast majority of, of the revenue. But there is this secondary level. It's almost like I'm not even promoting it. I just get these leads sort of behind, behind the scenes, which is like teams wanting to figure out how to get their engineering team that get their product team to adopt AI consistently, effectively in a, in a, in a standardized way. Right, right. [00:25:59] Speaker B: As opposed to just hoping that the individual members of your engineering team go off on their own and learn this stuff and then bring it in. They want to promote it. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like I do get a lot of people coming in who, who just are employees or they're, they work at a company so they themselves are trying to grow professionally, maybe increase their value in their company. That, that happens. But then I also have a lot of conversations with CEOs, CTOs, team leads who are looking for and all different sizes. Like I Just sold a private workshop engagement to a team of like 10. But then I had another call with a team of 400. What's interesting is like even that those different size companies have the exact same pain points that I'm talking to. Like I'm hearing this exact same phrases come up on these sales calls, right? Like you'll see a huge team. Maybe 10% of the members of the team are actually really excited, really hyped about using AI, using Claude code and using all these things. The rest of them are sort of grumbling, sort of slow. They sort of like the old way of doing things, you know, very natural. But the leadership wants the team to, you know, it's not really about like replacing developers. It's like, guys, we can move, we can build so much more. [00:27:09] Speaker B: You know, crazy to ignore, crazy to ignore. [00:27:13] Speaker A: And at this point, that's the other just also high level. I think we were talking about this before is like if there's a general commonality among all the demand that I'm seeing there, it's this general feeling of like everybody feels like they are behind the curve. This is me included, you know, everyone. [00:27:34] Speaker B: Even if you're the zeitgeist, is it not? [00:27:36] Speaker A: But even if you are, even if you consider yourself a little bit ahead of like further ahead than most, you're still behind because this week somebody, one of these big companies, Anthropic, OpenAI, Codex, Gemini, like they're going to drop some new feature that's totally new that changes the game or they say that it changes the game and you feel like you're behind. Right? Yeah. [00:27:57] Speaker B: The hype cycle is working in your favor because anyone who is either ahead or has an interest in being perceived as a head will go on X and tweet about it and brag about it and then everyone feels like they're behind again and then the cycle repeats. So there is a general feeling of I'm not growing fast enough, I don't know the tools well enough, I don't know what's. If I'm using the latest thing. That's right. Because the changes are so rapid. I want to ask you about one thing I saw recently, what I would call a sense of sobriety in like the second half of 2025. The first half of 2025 was like, everything's going to be different, everything's amazing, everything takes no time. And then people kind of sobered up. And I saw some very healthy conversations, specifically with Taylor Otwell Ellerville and Adam Wathen. And I saw Them describing like, yes, we're bought in. Absolutely, yes. But we're seeing people skip certain steps in their education and we foresee that turning into cracks in the foundation because people are skipping ahead on understanding what's happening under the hood. Maintenance of products is something that's ignored in the beginning because everyone ignores it in the beginning and then later on it becomes more difficult. So there seems to be a shift in like, you know, I recently listened to Aaron and Ian on their podcast and they were, I think it was AI Bro, I think was the name, the title of the podcast. And it was great to hear people, very experienced, describing the changes in their workflow and their attitudes and how they're adopting it. But it does seem to start to move in this direction of, okay, how do we. [00:29:42] Speaker A: Do we really know what the code is doing anymore? [00:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah, how do we combine this with doing things properly so that we can maintain great products for a long period of time, but without poo pooing and ignoring all the innovation and all the new products available? [00:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah, you're totally right. There are a few different parallel movements that I've seen happen over the last year, especially in the second six months of this year. I think early in the year and 2024 into early 2025, I think there was still generally a lot of skepticism from professional developers. I'm talking about software people, right. Some people were getting excited about and believe it or not, Claude Code launched in early 2025. People forget like it's still new. Like it did not exist in 2024. [00:30:28] Speaker B: It has won the market in our company entirely. [00:30:32] Speaker A: There was still a lot of skepticism from, especially from longtime professional high level developers, was like, you know, yeah, okay, it could, it could do this or that. But like it's not better than me hand coding my, my software or it's, or it's, I just don't trust it or it'll, you know, hallucinate and do this crap. I think as you get to the second half of 2025, as the newer models, the Opus 4.5s and the Gemini 3 and Codex and GPT5, that's when I just, I feel like all that skepticism started to fall away and you just don't hear it as much anymore. [00:31:07] Speaker B: And it's just a straightforward head on, this is not going to work skepticism. It's retreated back into. [00:31:12] Speaker A: I think it has turned into like, you cannot make the argument that like Opus 4.5 will write bad code. Like, no, it's incredible. [00:31:22] Speaker B: So if it's doing bad things it's not being used properly. And that's a big shift in the conversation. [00:31:26] Speaker A: The inputs are wrong, the structure is wrong. The process, the way that you're prompting, the way that you're writing specs is wrong. [00:31:32] Speaker B: But is that why it's moved into basically focusing on the specs and the planning and the organization of the agents? [00:31:38] Speaker A: I think that's a big part of it. But in general, it's like, I'm just noticing a general trust has started to set in. And also it's like an inevitability of. It's like, I think people who are longtime developers. Developers are like, okay, this isn't just a trend. This isn't just a thing that, like, I either need to decide to use it or decide not to use it. I think it's becoming more like, actually, it's borderline malpractice if you're not using Claude code and you're a professional developer. [00:32:04] Speaker B: You know, the skepticism has retreated into a 1% of, you know, never coder, never AI ers or whatever. [00:32:11] Speaker A: Yeah. But then it's still totally up in the air. We're in the wild west of, like, what is the right workflow? And that's what's most interesting to me. And if you watch any of my content, like, I'm constantly focused on, like, okay, like, they just dropped this exciting new tool or this or that, and people are talking about this. But, like, how does it actually affect, like, how I build a real piece of software? What's the workflow? What. What's going to need to change? How do I need to think differently about this? Like, that's what fascinates me. And I think most people, and I still think that there is, like, a huge gap in understanding of. So I just started recording a new podcast. I haven't published it yet, but I've been doing episodes. It'll become like the Builder Methods podcast or something, where I'm inviting other builders, people who build software. So I had, like, Arvid call, I had Brennan Dunn, I had a couple other people on there recently. I'm doing one later this afternoon where just share your screen, show me how you build stuff. And I'm just going to poke. I'm going to ask a ton of questions. And what's so fascinating to me is, like, every single person, these are people who use AI every single day. They. Every single person uses it completely differently. They all have different frameworks, different processes, endlessly fascinating tricks. [00:33:24] Speaker B: Endlessly fascinating. [00:33:25] Speaker A: So fascinating, you know, and they're all super effective in Completely different ways. [00:33:29] Speaker B: It's like talking to business people on how you do marketing, you know, how you grow, how do you hire. Everything of course, is different. What's interesting is how you got to where you are and of course you can continue to improve. And there is no right or wrong. So it can be endlessly fascinating because people's personalities can, you know, will mold. [00:33:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like how people learn and how do people adopt. Right. It's like you have to understand your current workflow and then say, oh, there's this new way of doing things. How does this slot in? Or what do I need to change to be more effective? And then, you know, that's the other movement that I'm starting to see in my own work. I went from totally hand coding everything to like half and half. Right. I would use AI to speed things up, but I'm still micromanaging where all the code goes in my code base so I know exactly what's going on. And now like I've built a couple apps recently where I did not hand write a single line of code. It's all through the AI interface and that influences like what's my tech stack like. I used to be like a Ruby on Rails purist and now I'm starting to build with like Rails with React, you know, inertia React. So like I used to be very anti React, but now that I'm not the one writing all that ugly React code, it is more effective when I'm using AI in the process. Okay. [00:34:53] Speaker B: You know, interesting. The I think there's a big split happening between commercially available software, I guess you would call it, that people are selling to the public as opposed to building internal tools. [00:35:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:35:06] Speaker B: The needs of those two categories are completely different. If I'm going to Manus and building something that helps me in a go to market activity that is onerous if I do it manually and beautiful if Manus does it for me. I don't care about the same things as if I'm building a product that I want people to put a credit card and pay for. And those camps seem to be splitting also where my favorite version of it is, you see someone post on Twitter saying, I really don't like this software that we use and it costs 5,000 bucks a year. And I was experimenting this weekend and now I found something that does like 95% of it and I'm happy with it and I don't care that it isn't going to be maintainable and I can't have a Thousand people using it and it's not connected to it. Just works for my company and myself. [00:35:58] Speaker A: Yeah. You mean like building like internal software? [00:35:59] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:36:00] Speaker A: Like your own custom. [00:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Your own tooling inside your company, inside your own life. Yes. And so it separates the professionalism even more. [00:36:09] Speaker A: It used to be the question of, like, do we build or do we buy? Right. And now it's like the build thing just got so much cheaper, you know? You know, there's obviously different use cases for different scenarios, like how critical is the software, how much trust we need to have behind it, how much, you. [00:36:26] Speaker B: Know, how important is it to your company if it goes wrong? Can you maintain it all? If this employee leaves that built it, or you, you know. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I was talking to Justin about this on the, on the panel podcast. Maybe last week was, you know, 37signals just launched. Fizzy. Yeah. And they have that like, open source version of it. [00:36:43] Speaker B: Yeah, Very interesting. I love, I love the debates that they create. [00:36:46] Speaker A: Of course, everybody loves them or hate them, but I love what they're doing there. [00:36:50] Speaker B: It's not open source because it's not. It's like you're literally playing directly into their hands. [00:36:54] Speaker A: That's like exactly what they wanted. And then of course, like, Matt Mullenweg weighs in. And that's what I was thinking. Oh, this is, this is great. Let me get the popcorn. You know, but like the. What I think is really interesting there is. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out for them. But I like the idea that, like, there's a lot of new SaaS tools that I'm like, yeah, that's, that's helpful. But it's. It. I only like 70% of it. There's 30% that just doesn't fit right for me. And that's probably the case with most SaaS tools that we buy. We don't love it a hundred percent, but they're offering an open source version. It's like, well, I could just grab that and have cloud code fix the other 30% for me. And that's a pattern that I think might become. I wouldn't say it's like a SaaS killer in the future, but that's becoming a very real option, I would say, for a lot of users. [00:37:48] Speaker B: Yeah. The incentives around releasing that type of software is interesting. I don't know if you listen to Invest like the Best. The Patrick o' Shaughnessy podcast, Very good podcast. He recently had Gavin Baker on, who is as knowledgeable on AI from a business and investment point of View as I've come across. And he was describing Google's incentive around subsidizing usage and how their incentive is just very different from an independent company that's trying to make money. And you see something like 37signals where you're like, I don't know if that's like the strategic, you know, art of war type move by them to open source this and kill the other. I don't really think it's like that for them. [00:38:33] Speaker A: No. I tend to think most of their moves are like gut feel. [00:38:37] Speaker B: Yes. And ideological. Like, we just think this is the right thing to do and this is what we like and this is how we want to do it, therefore go. But, but it is interesting that they can do that and can maintain that point of view and still build a good business. And I don't know if that leaks into other types of products and markets. We'll see. There does seem to be no shortage of growth in a lot of different software categories, not just pure AI coding products. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:39:08] Speaker B: So that's, I mean, that's working just fine. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, what you're doing with Rosie, like, you could start to see it like, seep into the mainstream of like normies using. Using AI, Right. Yeah. [00:39:20] Speaker B: It's funny how both of us are in the right zone for us. For me it is taking tech and pulling it down toward people who are not technical. Same. Cardhook did the same thing. And for you it's, well, what's going on right here and all the questions and demand around figuring out how to use it properly and how do I teach there and there's plenty to monetize. [00:39:41] Speaker A: There's absolutely. The reason why this business worked is because I pushed. I established a distribution channel first. [00:39:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:39:48] Speaker A: Like, I could be talking about AI selling stuff about AI, but if nobody knows about it, there's no point. [00:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah. This is what you brought up in June, by the way. You were like, no, I think I need to go here and I'm not sure where I'm going to sell yet. And what we talked about was you're doing the classic thing. You're doing the thing, you're building the audience first and you'll figure out what to sell later. [00:40:08] Speaker A: I remember talking about that now. Yeah, I really wasn't sure, like, what shape my product offering was going to take. I knew it would be some sort of like, educational, membership, community kind of thing. But yeah, so, but like, I think the thing is, like, I can't just look back on my history and look at My struggles with previous businesses and say like, oh, if only I had run the playbook that I'm running for builder methods on this other insert. Any previous business there, like no, I don't think that would have worked. Right. And the reason why, like I do think that with when it comes to the distribution channel, especially something that is like creator focused like YouTube, I think that there are two essential ingredients that came together. One is the massive demand, the natural wave that is happening in the world. Like that has to exist first. And number two, like it has to be, I'm the one creating the videos, I'm the one writing the content and delivering it and being genuinely authentic and passionate about it and just frankly having a point of view about it. The only way that that happens is if I'm personally invested in the topic space. Right. So like I can't look at it and look at like, I don't know, like clarity, flow with, with coaches and say like, oh, if only I had gone hard on a YouTube channel speaking to professional coaches. Well, I'm not a professional coach. I have nothing to say about that. You know, it just wouldn't have worked. [00:41:31] Speaker B: The match between those two things. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker B: And that might be relatively specific to the creator type of. Right. So that makes sense. The content, the passion, for lack of a better term, the caring about it. Authenticity. Yeah, it makes sense. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Yeah, man. What else do you look back, maybe we could start to look back and look forward. But like, are there any, I don't know, like big like regrets or things that you're hoping to correct personally, professionally, business wise? Looking back on 25, looking ahead to. [00:42:02] Speaker B: 26, we ran a lot of experiments and most of them failed. If I look back, I quote, wasted, otherwise known as experiments that failed hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2025. And I think being okay with that was important for 2025 success overall. If I'm being self critical, one lesson that I didn't internalize. If you find a channel that works, go crazy in it. I tried advertising, really worked. We ramped it up a lot and it kind of fell apart at a certain level and we had to retreat back. And that's when we started experimenting with other channels. None of the other channels have worked as well, so I don't know what that tells me, you know, that's complicated. It's like we shouldn't have tried the other channels, like, whatever. So being okay with a lot of mistakes in 25 wasn't like the classic. [00:42:55] Speaker A: Thing with ads is that like, you know, the economics at at level A don't necessarily translate to level B. [00:43:01] Speaker B: Level C. Yes, so, so that definitely happened to us. One thing I think we did really well is we, we were not in a rush to expand the product. We, the market just told us that we didn't need to and we were better off just staying very, very narrowly focused on our feature set and getting better at it and making people happier and making sure and go down than we were expanding. 2026 is when that changes. So if we like turn the corner and start to look forward. Right now, Rosie is uni channel. It is a voice channel. [00:43:35] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:35] Speaker B: It's a communication tool and it operates on one channel, which is voice, one modality, whatever you want to call it. And the theme of 2026 will be to expand to new communication channels. And the interesting part of that, that I wasn't aware of along the way, but now it becomes very obvious. We have just under 1500 customers and I've never been in this type of a situation where we can launch additional products to the same audience. So when we, when we expand to new channels, right, sms, outbound, email, chat. Right. These are all different channels, same communication. You basically have a rosy brain that knows your business and it can communicate in different ways. But what I learned is that voice is not magic. It's just the same thing as an LLM with text, there just happens to be a synthesizer. [00:44:30] Speaker A: I mean, it's literally like reading text, that it generates the text first and then it reads it, right? [00:44:34] Speaker B: That's right. And the Internet is so damn fast these days that you can do it in a conversational timing. So when you start to realize that, you start to think, well, okay, we can take this text and make it valuable in other places. [00:44:48] Speaker A: And I remember this was something when you were first pivoting to Rosie or the strategy behind it, it was like, this is something that gets us in with small businesses and then we can expand into other stuff. [00:44:59] Speaker B: Yes. So that is Q1. We're going to be releasing the next channel, the next modality. We're going to focus on sms. And it's interesting to build it in such a way where you can basically launch something that's not public, but you're launching it to 1,500 paying customers. So my, you know, my, in my. [00:45:21] Speaker A: Planning, you're gonna get that, that early start with it. Yes. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Right. So think of the math, right? No straightforward, 1500 paying customers. If 20% of them say yes to this offer in the first 60, 90 days, that's 300 customers. If it's an average revenue per user of a hundred bucks. You just added 30k in mrr. You haven't released it publicly yet. So that's kind of like what 2026 should look like, is how do we provide more value to our existing customers and then that in a secondary effect makes the product more valuable to new people. [00:45:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I could really see that working well for you too. Just thinking about, like sms, that is how most people want to communicate. That's right. With businesses, most people don't want to talk to anyone, even if it's a robot, you know. [00:46:06] Speaker B: Yes. And we also need to acknowledge that it's also very exciting, the fact that we are handling the pain of what's probably the smallest communication channel for these customers, people who actually call the phone. It's very high pain, high reward, whatever you want to call it. Because people who call are most likely to buy or they're most likely to be upset. So you do need to take care of them. But in reality, where's the majority of their activity? It's on their website, it's on Yelp, it's on Angie's list, it's on these other places that exist that are not voice. And so that just makes me look at 2026 and be really excited, like, oh, this is just the beginning. And if this voice is a wedge of like this innovative, like, solution to get in with people, the challenge is going to be to not dilute the message too much. Because right now when you get to the Rosie website, you're like, never miss another opportunity just because you can't answer the phone. [00:47:05] Speaker A: I could see how that'll be challenging. Like, if I think about all those, I think about it's like all the email marketing tools they all tried to add in the SMS or even like sending postcards and all this different stuff. And it's like, I just care about the emails, guys. I don't want to do, you know, but like, but you could see, I'm sure they have channels where they are selling that to. [00:47:23] Speaker B: That's right. But the entry point is complicated, which is why. [00:47:28] Speaker A: But that's why having the existing customer base, the sales conversations happen on the back end, you know, they don't have to. [00:47:34] Speaker B: That's right. Like it might be a voice AI funnel that does a very good job at upselling 20% of people into this new product now. [00:47:42] Speaker A: But I could even see a year from now where it's flipped, right? [00:47:46] Speaker B: Yep, that's right. Which is very strange to think about. But so, but so it goes. And in many ways, you know, when we have this conversation six months from today, we'll be able to talk about what that product and positioning and messaging journey looked like. Because right now I'm just pushing it off on purpose. Because when we come out to our existing customers and we work with them, they're going to tell us how to position it. They're going to tell us if we have the pricing right, if we have the positioning right, how they think about it, which one they think about first, whether it's voice or sms. And it's almost like we're better off launching internally, learning and then putting it out publicly on the site to. And we'll be much better off in. [00:48:32] Speaker A: Our positioning and messaging, that strategy. That makes total sense. [00:48:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's Q1 and there's other stuff behind that you can see on the horizon. But what's clearest in 2026 is to go from unichannel to multichannel. How that's going to unfold, not sure. But SMS is going to be first. It's the right place to start. And so, right, if we added 1.5 million ARR in 2025, we should put a big ass goal for 2026. Right. How do we add 5 million ARR in 26 and then start working backwards around? Okay, what's the existing customer base? What's the ARPU that we can get to from the existing custom. Where should it go? What percentage of people are going to convert to these other things and then go from there? But that's the challenge is take a break for the holidays and then in January get this thing launched to our existing customers and then start learning. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. [00:49:25] Speaker B: What do you see? January comes around, what are you focused on? And then what do you think about the year in general? [00:49:30] Speaker A: You know, I'm even just starting to think about this like now, like this week. Because up until now, as I'm hearing like the fourth month of this working like December has already equaled what I, what I brought in in November. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Okay. [00:49:43] Speaker A: And you're halfway through. Yeah, halfway through. So like, so like this, the funnel is working as it stands today. YouTube channel, email list. I sell live workshops, I sell the membership that technically works and what that, what that requires. Like to me the most important aspect of this business right now is my ability to create high quality video content and get it out on YouTube. That is the funnel like, or that's how that's the engine. Right. Personally, that, that adds some, some urgency. Like every week I have to Be creating something that I think is great. I, I pour a ton of energy and time and hours and days just to make a single YouTube video. So that's a little tiring. I'm not, I'm not stopping that at any time soon. [00:50:30] Speaker B: Well, it's working, which gives you energy. [00:50:32] Speaker A: It's working and I like it. It's hard, but I like it. But part of me is also like, it is very hit and miss. You could literally just see it on my YouTube channel. Like, like, yeah, I start to get a sense for like what topics are going, are probably going to hit, but I don't always know. And so that now is when I'm starting to feel a little. Fragile is the wrong word in terms of like, can this thing fall apart? Because I, I think if I, if I change absolutely nothing, there should be some expected growth to just naturally happen in 2026. Right. Like my YouTube channel is gonna continue to incrementally grow because I'm gonna continue to do content. Right. I think going from like I'm at 23k subs, like getting to 50k by mid year is pretty realistic. I would say maybe 100k by the end of the year, maybe a stretch goal, I don't know. But just that funnel growth alone should sell more builder methods Pro memberships. And I'm into that. That's the goal. Also there's gonna be renewals which will start in September 2026. These are annual subscriptions. So it's a membership business models. So that is notorious for a higher churn than something like SaaS. But with a growing funnel that's fine. Right? But that also puts pressure on like I gotta keep adding value and stuff like that. So that's gonna naturally happen. I am gonna start to. I get inquiries about sponsorships all the time. So that, that'll be a layer of revenue that will, that will come in probably in Q1, but I am starting to feel like I need to diversify the top of the floor funnel because right now literally the only way people discover builder methods is through, specifically through my YouTube channel. Like I don't even post my videos to Twitter or any like, you know, it's just like people only know me as a YouTuber and I can't help but think that there's a whole world of this demand that we were talking about that are just not, not in the YouTube audience. Right. Like, so I should, I'm not even doing anything right now when it comes to repurposing my videos, turning them into like SEO blog posts like or short format on LinkedIn or. Yeah, I do a little bit of short form but it's all on YouTube. I'm not doing TikTok. Like I'm not doing Instagram. I should be figuring that those processes out. Sure. And I mean I'm also thinking about getting into ads as well. I have a ton of content. I have a, I have a funnel that's working. I should be able to just get in front of more people who are interested in ChatGPT and Cloud Code and you know, if you can make a. [00:52:57] Speaker B: Paid funnel work, it's magic. It's magic. [00:52:59] Speaker A: And it's, I mean it's, you know, the thing is like super profitable right now. So I have some cash to experiment with. I don't want to get like too you know, distracted with the. Because I do have a funnel that's working and it, and it requires a lot of creative energy. But I am thinking about like how do I diversify the top of the funnel in terms of like the product. The main thing probably won't change builder methods pro. I expect I'll continue to build out little, little tools and things but those are going to be sort of periphery because those are more like I, I build tools all the time now. I could build a whole tool in like a week that's like, it turns into content for the members. A tool that helps me optim my internal operations. But Agent OS and design OS are free open source tools. But I am talking to a lot of the users of those and seeing a pretty clear path to like a cloud service version of those. That's something that I think might come into play in 2026. Not like a premium hosted version of the same product, but more of like a cloud. So like if you're. There's a lot of teams who use agent OS but they need to share their specs with their marketing team or their product team and get it out of the code base. And like design OS is about creating these, these designs for your new product. You need to share it with your team or with your clients, with your stakeholders. So like having like a, a cloud component to these open source tools might be an interesting side play but the, the main thing is like keep the funnel going, keep my creative energy flowing and keep building stuff. That's kind of the plan. Cool. Yeah. [00:54:33] Speaker B: Going in. I thought your big question for 2026 could basically be narrowed down to do more of the same or do different stuff. And it sounds like it's not, it's not that simple. Actually, I wanted to hate on you even saying anything bad about YouTube. But you're right that if YouTube is the anchor. Right. It's still the anchor, but there's more to do around it. [00:54:56] Speaker A: It's more like, how do I leverage what I'm already doing on YouTube more? Right. Like, I'm definitely gonna continue the primary content and thought pieces that I create. They always come out as a YouTube video first. That's gonna continue. But why am I not taking that? Cause I literally write a script word for word. It's essentially an article. Like, I should be publishing that to LinkedIn. I should be. That should be getting SEO just on Twitter. [00:55:21] Speaker B: And the short form video platforms are the top of the funnel in terms of attention. [00:55:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And I've been publishing to YouTube shorts and they. Some of them perform kind of well. The longs perform much better in terms of getting people onto my email list. [00:55:37] Speaker B: Sure. But how do they. How do they find that? Is the. [00:55:39] Speaker A: How do they find that? And that. That's like the algorithm. But that's also where I feel a little bit of stress, where it's like every week, like, is this going to be a hit or is this going to be a miss? And that. That's going to directly impact my funnel. So it would be nice if, like, I know I'm always going to have hits and misses, but I also have SEO, but I also have LinkedIn. But I also have. [00:55:59] Speaker B: And a system to push it out. That's right. It just increases the likelihood of it being a hit. [00:56:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:56:05] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:56:06] Speaker A: Fun stuff, man. [00:56:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:08] Speaker A: I think we'll see you back on this feed in. In six months. [00:56:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I bought Powerball tickets because it's a billion dollars. Okay. I know the match. Don't. Don't hate me, so. But if I win, no more podcasts, bro. [00:56:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Nice. [00:56:22] Speaker B: Cool. Well, I'm jumping into the last all hands stand up of the year for our team. And then we're off. Really great to catch up with you. Great to see you. [00:56:32] Speaker A: Yeah, you too, buddy. Happy New Year to everyone. Happy and healthy one and happy Hanukkah 2026. [00:56:39] Speaker B: That's right. Let's get it. [00:56:40] Speaker A: Happy New Year. Later, folks. Sam.