Bob Jansen

@destraynor @stevenvanwel @Fin_ai Happening here too! Man; “where can I find the @firmhouse MCP server?”

One interesting thing about running a very modern AI product (@fin_ai) with 8,000 customers is that literally all of these users exist at the same time. And you kinda have to make it work for everyone.

LLM generated prototypes is the kind of the late night drunken white boarding session of product building. Ideas seem super cool at the time, and people obviously get excited about new prototypes, but then after a day or week you might realize these was a bad or useless idea. Now you wasted all this time and focus instead of working on something more meaningful, and maybe something more deeper and harder than a quick prototype.

Start of a journey! Firmhouse is going to get its own place in @Shopify very soon. Great payment experiences for European merchants: here we come! Fun fact: We had a Shopify API integration for years already. Helping merchants across Europe to support their customers where other apps and Shopify's native features are lacking. It takes quite some effort to go from "we have the Shopify API integrated" to "we can submit the app to Shopify". You need to implement all kinds of extensions, implement compliance webhooks, get some marketing and product demo content up-and-going. Our team rallied around since last Sunday. And we got it done in a week. We submitted our app yesterday evening on Friday. We even had two @heroku outages punching us in the face while doing so. And despite of that, we still got it done. Our app is now submitted and up for review. Happy to work with whoever at @Shopify is going to be on the other side!

The entire tech eco-system is going back to basics. Remembering that revenue minus cost equals profit. Something that self-funded founders live and breath.

Good day to remind people that founding new businesses (aka startups) is a personal development journey in hard mode.

The one thing every CEO of a startup from 5-500+ employees notices: The ones that truly, really go the extra yard. For real. Stands so, so far out. Even up to 500 employees or so, the CEO can see it themselves.

@destraynor @eoghan we've been with @intercom for a while now, but more and more we are dreading having to pay for features constantly everywhere in the product. It completely breaks the user experience. Every time I'm doing something new, I have to talk to sales.

@marciplan You had to round it down, didn’t you?

45 interactions per user isn’t much is it

@yschaub Honestly, it’s fairly simple. Be short, to the point and tell them you’re not there to sell something. You’re curious to learn about how they do things and just have a few short questions. Works wonders! Just go for it. And of course stick to the non-selling :)

@jansn any tips for setting up these learning/discovery calls? How do you set up such a discussion? It feels hard to me to strike that balance between i'm here to learn / i also have a product that might be useful for you. E.g. i feel like a hobo begging for their time

I want to get better at demand generation and doing sales / "intake" calls. Who should I follow? Which books should I read? I noticed I've been dreading this lately and instead worked on my product. I pushed myself to do some cold outreach within my network and I managed to book at least two calls so far. Any advice?

@yschaub Use that thought to try and find those online. If that’s not possible, it will tell you something about your future distribution model as well.

@yschaub At the start one question matters: if you walk into a room of 100 of your customers and you have 15 minutes to talk to a few, who do you pick and how?

@yschaub Good luck @yschaub - really cool you’re taking the leap.

🫡 I finally did it...! I quit my well paying tech job today and bought a one way ticket to Thailand so I can go all in on my own projects. The #1 advice I read on here is that you shouldn't go all-in on your projects without substantial MRR. I'm far from that (€75/mo), but I decided to take this step anyway. Heres why... I couldn't stand my daytime job anymore I'll spare you the dirty laundry but bottom line I got zero energy out of my job anymore and with no perspectives of it getting better, the only other option was switching jobs but... ...the job market isn't that great right now and will take a while to recover There are very little interesting opportunities for Product Designers and it got much harder to get hired. Last time I applied for jobs in 2021 I made it to the first round 90% of the time, now it's maybe 10%. I dont see this changing in the next 6-12 months which is why... ...I saved up enough runway for at least a year What good are savings if you cant use them? I've invested most of my money the past 3 years so I can now live comfortably for a while in SE Asia. But most importantly... ...I feel this is my last shot at going solo I will be doing this together with my partner. We are in our early 30's and don't have kids yet. We give ourselves a full year to go all-in on our own businesses. With no mouths to feed but ourselves and no mortgage to pay, this all plays out much easier. I'm insanely excited but also scared at the same time. But in all major decisions in my life, these two feelings were always present. Growth only happens for me when these two meet. If you've read this far, I hope you'll follow me on this journey and maybe I'll even see some of you in Thailand or wherever this adventure takes me! Yann

@krijnrijshouwer @lemni_ai Looks awesome! 🔥

Am beyond excited to announce @Lemni_AI — A transformation of work ✨ We’ve been working on it for a year and can’t wait to release it to the public this spring 🤗 More → lemni.ai

@yschaub Love the logo ❤️!

I broke my rule of no-landing page 😄 After coding for a month straight I noticed I really missed designing in Figma. As my first paid customer is now onboarded nicely and the product is taking shape, I'm gonna start dedicating more time to outreach by tapping into my personal network. I still don't think I need a landing page to get my second paid customer but sometimes you just gotta have fun. #buildinginpublic

@yschaub How ARR you doing Yann?

I love how this place is so transparent about revenue numbers. But as someone just starting out, I noticed today that it does more harm than good to me. It makes me doubt myself. And frankly I feel it makes me chase the wrong thing. Therefore, muted for now ✌️ #buildinpublic

If you told me 10 years ago that a group of the smartest engineers in the land would evoke the threat, "Do what I say or I will go to work at Microsoft," I would not have believed you. Amazing shift in corporate reputation (and much credit to Satya).

@JoshSchoen I believe this was mentioned on the rental forms in the recent rentals I had. Quite clearly as well. It’s odd, even if you pay why can’t you leave it in the carpark there.

I was a few hours late in picking up our rental car, so they gave it to someone else. That seems ridiculous to me. Just charge me but keep the car reserved for me. No?

@awilkinson @levelsio 100% with @firmhouse we transitioned from an agency doing 1st launches of new products for corporates, to building our own product. The platform we are today started with an agency project of Philips, we continued development on our dime, and signed them as launching customer.

@levelsio Just different types of businesses and incentives structures. I know lots of people who worked in agencies then built successful startups. People behave differently when its their own money or they own 100%.

Agencies corrupt people who want to do startups later I think Devs, designers and ppl I met who worked for or ran agencies have very different priorities They want to impress B2B clients with the latest flashy tech and do whatever the CLIENT tells them instead of choosing the right thing and making the best app/site/startup for the USERS It’s the completely opposite mindset of building a startup: use simple tech available, stay lean at first, validate, make the best app possible for users That’s why working for running an agency is like a handicap if you want to become a real entrepreneur later You have to unlearn everything