22 | quit crypto to build podex with my brother. documenting all of it.
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Joined March 2024
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Most of what I called "working on the company" was just staying busy.
Rewriting a page that did not need another rewrite.
Jumping between marketing ideas and finishing none of them.
Saving advice I was never going to use.
The days that actually moved something were quieter.
I talked to someone who tried the product.
I shipped one small thing they were stuck on.
I wrote about what was actually going on, even when it was messy.
I still have busy days. I just trust them less than I used to.
I cut most of my marketing down.
Not because something started working. I just got tired of being on too many platforms and being mid at all of them.
It is just X and LinkedIn now.
Feels a bit exposed. When you have five things running, you can always tell yourself the other one will pick up. Now there is nowhere else to look.
I do not know if this is the right call yet. I just know I was doing too much.
I gave myself a few months to become someone people in this space actually recognize.
Not famous. Just known.
Writing that out feels a bit embarrassing, which is probably why I avoided saying it.
I am building a company while I am still in university. I do not have years to quietly get good and hope the right people stumble onto me. If they do not know who I am, a lot of what I am building just sits there.
The easy move is to stay in the product all day and call it focus. Shipping feels clean. Trying to be remembered feels like you are begging.
I am done pretending those are different jobs.
The next few months will look a bit desperate from the outside. More of me than feels polite.
That is fine. I would rather look hungry for a season than stay politely invisible for years.
We used to keep adding features.
This week we did the opposite and simplified the whole product down to one action.
You paste a podcast or a long YouTube link. You get a playbook from that episode: the useful summary and the steps you can actually take.
Most early products are hard to explain. I got tired of that.
This is the one sentence version. Now I have to repeat it until people remember it.
Founders don't have time to sit through a 90-minute podcast.
So we made Podex do one thing.
Paste any podcast or long YouTube link.
Get a playbook back: a useful summary, plus the actual steps from that episode.
Not a full transcript. The parts you'd actually use.
We stripped everything else back so this could be the product.
If you have a long episode sitting in your tabs right now, this is for you.
I'm begging you, make the first use of your app easier:
- Remove the welcome pop-up.
- Let people skip the product tour.
- Ask for their name, job and company later.
- Open straight to the tool they signed up for.
- Add a sample file so they can test it immediately.
- Save their progress if they close the tab.
- Let them download the result without another form.
They signed up to get something done. Let them.
In my crypto days I used to grind X like my life depended on it.
Averaged around 500-1000 replies a day and I grew really fast because of it.
Wonder if that same strategy still works..
Mark Cuban’s son was showing him get-rich-quick schemes from social media.
Your dad is a billionaire and someone on your phone is still convincing you they’ve found an easier way.
Cuban told the story on The Diary of a CEO. His son would bring him videos about dropshipping, shoe drops and other ways to make money.
Cuban’s reaction was to question why someone with such a profitable opportunity was busy telling strangers about it.
I wouldn’t dismiss every business someone teaches online. But I would want to know how much of their income comes from doing it, and how much comes from selling the instructions.
Later, Cuban described starting MicroSolutions.
He was living with five other guys in a three-bedroom apartment. He didn’t have his own bedroom. Getting to $15,000 in unpaid customer invoices felt like progress towards moving out.
He says the company was profitable every month of its eight-year existence.
That gives you a useful way to check the next business idea that looks irresistible on your feed.
Say someone promises you can make $10,000 a month running an agency.
Before buying anything, write down what one customer would actually receive for their money.
“AI automation” isn’t enough to work with. Which task gets done? What do you need from the customer? Who fixes it when it goes wrong?
Then find someone who already pays to get that task done.
Ask what they paid last time, what annoyed them and whether they’d let you quote for the next job. You might discover the work is worth far less than the video suggested. You might discover a more expensive problem the video never mentioned.
If you get an order, keep track of everything it takes to deliver it.
The sales calls. The software. The revisions. The messages on Sunday because the customer can’t get something to work.
A $1,000 payment feels different when you realise you’ve spent 35 hours earning it and still owe a contractor $400.
Then ask for a second order at a price that makes the work worthwhile.
That’s the part I’d want to see before getting excited about ten clients a month.
You can spend a weekend choosing an agency name, building a website and imagining what you’ll do with the money.
Getting one person to pay you, delivering what you promised and having enough left to want to do it again takes longer.
But at least you’ll know whether you like the business once there’s actual work in it.
My brother and I built Podex for the podcasts you keep saving but never finish.
Get the key lessons and practical steps from an episode: getpodex.com
I think the biggest advantage you can have at 22 is knowing what you actually want.
Most people my age don't. Not because they're lazy, but because they never sat down and asked themselves.
So they default to whatever's in front of them. The degree their parents picked. The job their friends applied for. The life their feed tells them is normal.
And then they spend 3 hours a day scrolling content that has nothing to do with where they want to go.
I'm not judging. I did the same thing for a long time.
But once you know exactly what you want, everything gets easier to filter. What you watch, who you listen to, what you say no to.
Most people aren't behind because they're not smart enough. They're behind because they're running hard in no direction.
Traffic is the lowest it's been since we started.
Weirdly, people still sign up every day.
I've been trying a different marketing thing every few days, and honestly, I don't know what's working yet.
We just shipped a new feature too, so the timing is great lol.
Anyone else just figuring it out as they go?
Zoost retweeted
Stop taking advice from people who have never done the thing.
Your uncle who "knows business" but has worked the same job for 20 years.
The guy in your class who has a take on every startup but has never sold anything.
The YouTuber telling you how to make $10K a month whose only income is telling you how to make $10K a month.
It sounds obvious, but almost everyone does it.
Because those people are easy to find. They're everywhere, and they love giving advice.
The people who have actually done it are busy doing it. They're not in your group chat. They're not at the family dinner.
So you end up building your whole worldview from people who never left the starting line.
The fix is simple and a little uncomfortable.
Before you take any advice, ask yourself one question:
Has this person gotten the result I want?
If not, it's just an opinion. Treat it like one.