#207 – The Art of Podcasting, the Future of Angel Investing, and Startup Ideas for Indie Hackers with Rob Walling of Tinyseed
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What's up, everybody? This is courtlandt andi hacker's that com. And you're listening to the ni hakko podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process.

And on this show, I sit down with these ni hackers to discuss the idea as the opportunities and the strategies they're taking advantage so the rest of can do the same. All right, i'm here with rob willing, the creator of tiny seed. They started accelerator design for b. Strappers, and the creator of microcode has going up.

Pretty good. Man, go to be back on the show.

We are here on river side recording this, where they are the primary competitors to report folio company's squad cast, who I also used in love.

almost rejected your calendar and by and said, i'm sorry, here's my squad gasoline .

in k let's recorded I have put him up my squad a and record. It's all on stripes time. So whatever pay for two, two podcast recording tools, I haven't .

used riversides yet. So this is a treat to be able to, you know, because I have we used to use sanctuary for start, obviously switch squads test.

And so this first experience with the feed, whatever learning you get back to the squad cast guys, what are you using for your podcast? This seems squad cast you do in video or you doing .

doing a little bit of video just toying with that actually over the past few weeks and and so heard an assistant producer and iran and he's I love IT. He's got to get up and go you know, he's like, let's try this, let's try that and i'm like the old guy now I like, is this really worth the time? Is very earth but but it's cool because he's sparing me on to like experiment with things.

So instead of just recording audio, now since oda ast supports of video and native been recording like the first five to ten minutes of an interviewer conversation in video and then just watching to audio, I don't see. I like audio only and we've had good luck with that with the come for ready. I think we have three hundred eight videos. We went from zero subscribers a year ago to seventy five hundred now. And it's been a mix of promoting to our audience, you know like ealing head new videos up and then just this organic reach.

And I had met i'd always heard youtube is the second largest search engaging compared to google, but I didn't sink in to me of just the sheer volume of yeah right yeah but and and this is one of those things where it's that investment and it's a emetrius risk of like are we're going to pay air in every week to create more of these? And how many eclipse can we get out of IT and we're going to get nothing back for probably months and then we will get one hit and for microcomputer, one that flip us was the Jason coin designing idea of bright business talk from twenty twelve, I believe. And that got on hacker news.

And I think, like pet, i'll never tweet IT and just a bunch stuff happen. And that went to tens of thousands of use overnight, and that got a bunch of describes to the microban channel. And once you get there, it's a signal to youtube that you should start ranking for other things and that I think what i'm going to try with the starts of the rest, when can we get to that point where we get that flip and the channel becomes, uh, I making this up like I did. I just imagining there's a .

and you've get the recommended videos. So you end the video to pop up other videos, the videos on the side bar. It's a super good for discovery and people to like dalai click first is like a podcast player.

I don't know podcast discovery seems really terrible and maybe it's a problem that no one cares about except for pocket host like we was as verage yeah, me too. But I think one of cool things about youtube is that essentially, even if you don't necessary have a channel, you can go to other people's nels and like sort of collaborate. So I experimented with this last year as well.

For example, one of this guy that is, well coin, they notice people coming to any hackers are kind of like referencing OK heard about you on will quin channel. Gok, I don't know who this guy is on me. Check any other couple videos.

We just like mentioned any hackers. So I failed them and was okay. Can I come on now? Maybe we do a collaborative video and he, just with me when I kiss videos, has got twenty five thousand views. And alex, you know, some single dia percentage of people who send up for any actions say, oh, because I saw this video and channel so you can also do the circuit on people who already have, like hundreds of thousands of scribers who talk about sort of ten general things, sort of influence amErica via youtube, rather than just doing kind of the pocket cit.

Oh my gosh, that that you just made this whole recording worth for me because, you know, for years i've been like, I came up with this. It's not a terribly clever name, but podcast tour like because I did IT for his tail e and I did IT for drip and I was like, i'm not going to do a bookstore, i'm going to do podcasts.

Ore, and so i'd make this big list at email, everyone I knew, and a bunch people who I didn't know, and I would gone every podcast. You know, I just blame at the earth, right, trying to talk about again, hit, tail dripped, whatever. Microban, ny, c, but I had never considered, of course, is just a simple copy pace. Like to do that on youtube. Now I don't have much of a network on youtube, but that is a really good idea.

Think it's underrated. People just don't think about the put a typical podcast is an interview. And so ever when I go, I should pitch myself to be interview.

But like this guy's channel, kan's channel, like he's not doing interviews. He's like making. He's like highly edited cool videos. You know, like the fact that just like an interview and there is a super easy content for him, super easy for me ah and so yeah, I think it's underrated people to try that out.

I have actually purchased ads in overcast and you can go to our overcast a FM flash ads to kind of see are rate yeah it's interesting. I heard about IT from crc, cute right in castles, and is tightened all that. I purchased ads in a couple other players, but I didn't IT didn't work overcast.

I saw new subscribers increase. The cost eventually got in, much like adwords and facebook ads before them, the cost became, you know not cost prohibited basically. I think originally when I did IT, IT was like I maybe a dollar per new podcasts describer which sounds outrageous, but IT was still like cool. I think it's like four box per now and it's I just can't I just can't, not for free.

It's not worth IT ton of money after podcast. You probably aren't I know very many people who are, but yeah, pocket there is such a is very different than every other channel. Like i'm starting a podcast, my body, Julian, and I just think in about podcast growth. But growth, almost any sort of APP is basically like user acquisition and like retention, like those are the two biggest numbers that matter. And if you're of leaking users and like it's really the first thing you need to plug.

So if you imagine like a blog, like James clear blog, he's got a toner traffic, his blog, almost all of that comes in through asia, which means is the retention is basically zero, like every reader probably doesn't come back, probably isn't like routinely going to James clear calm pocket on the exact opposite where all the big shows i'm aware of, like having extremely high retention numbers. People just listen because they like the hosts. We kind of want to check in on the host.

And like most of the best podcast, if you listen to their entries, it's kind of the host is kind of a student to ship with each other. Just saying almost nothing and you kind of get into IT, would you like I like these people, you know, I want to hear there are up to. And so pocket are all about retention and acquisition is much harder because like there aren't really great channels for acquiring listeners, like there's youtube, there's ads, there's kind of the podcast tour, like the best thing to do is potential podcast on other podcast, but like that's IT, it's really hard to measure.

Like the tool suck. I think apple just now revamped like their tools right now. You can kind of like go and and see like really detailed metrics and stuff like it's spent like twenty years and they're just now adding tools to see this kind of stuff. And so yeah, I know I think is a big opportunity for people who wanted take podcasting seriously to really die event like the the strategies and think think about what makes a show attentive know for andy hackers, for example.

A lot of people get bored listening to the same stories over and over like i've heard you know, thirty five stories of a founder succeeding and that's good enough, you know and so this kind of graduate I out that retentive ves whereas for example, the all in podcast with Jason, cons and jac, that's all news and so that they just talk about like what's going on and the headlines this week and like that's never something that you turn from. You always like one. And that was going on the world .

and there's a trade off. They're too right? Because I would never go back because I listen all in as well.

I would never go back and listen to the old episodes because they're at a date now. But I would if I found any hackers, if I found starts to rest for the back catalog is amazing. So I am sure you get these emails, but I get the emails at the tweet.

I just want back and listening to two hundred episodes if you show and I always like, i'm sorry, but but that like sucks people and then they're like, I mean, much to your point of they love the host. They want to follow the story. They want to hear your thoughts on X, Y, Z topic. And so that's the trade off, right?

Maybe the idea is a combo then typical education emphases that people are always going to find valuable. And then like some sort of like current events, news, like discussion, what do you do on your show as well? Are you talking about clubhouse and twitter spaces that kind of like you is always relevant that people are talking about, that they are going to share?

And that was a big shift about well as about two years ago now, where my former cohoes, mike taper, took a step back to focus on you on his stuff. And I had to figure out, I don't want this to be an interview show. You know, there are already really good interview shows like the hackers. And this mixture gere's all the other one. And I was trying to figure out that baLance.

And over months of experimenting, I kept in the feedback because I was so i'm an engineer, right? And I was try to figure what's the formula? And I was like, every four weeks i'm going to do A Q N A, and every four weeks i'm going to do this and every six weeks i'm to do news round table start up news thing and I talked to people and they said, I don't care like that's all like capturing ing is I don't care, just don't make IT the same every time. You know there's rob, there's rob solo episodes.

You know it's just and I keep coming up with new formats and i'm willing to try IT now because people say the variety, the fact that I every tuesday morning I open IT and I don't know what to expect, I actually like I had no one who said, oh, if there's too much variety or I don't know what to expect or I only like this type of show, right? So that's been motivation for me to start thinking. I had never thought of recording a solar epo de before that, but now I have like these twenty minute episode.

It's just me talking, almost like I would Normally have done in a blog post if I had more time to write IT. But i'm now giving IT. Here's a mental frameworks i'm thinking of, rider.

Here's what I see succeeding with as today or here's a common question. I get the same question four times in two months of like i'm in a record of segment. That's just here's the advice of giving that's cool.

How much do you prep for that like you write out basically block post and sort of read? Are you just think about a topic and just go bullets.

bullets? I think about a topic I make actually sent you kind of some outline loose thoughts. I mean, that's about that's even more outline than I Normally would where it's just three bullets and I talk and sometimes IT ones up the editor editor that comes back and I like, ooh, but my editor is also getting pretty good at peeling. Also pull that entire paragraph you that the whole story that augmented that didn't work definite getting Better at the first time you do IT is very hard and then you know subsequent times if you get Better out yeah maybe I should .

do that because it's like the it's the least guest dependent because there is no guest. So you can do whenever you want. You can always like, oh, I missing and I was so just like sit down, record something.

I'm curious, is your editor the same as your producer? You mention you have like A A new producers like sort of pushing you forward. Same person.

different two people. Yeah, i've had i've had the same editor for six, seven years now. And if produced services like no castles productions, you know where you can pave x hundred dollars a month and have have done, if they hit existed back when we hire him, we would have used them.

But realistically, we went to up work and and found someone I do like having that tweet ability. I mean, I I probably couldn't work with product, that services because i'm just too pick go and be like i'm going to slice this. I need this whole thing rerouted.

So yeah, I think the way to go is you want to like an actual particular editor who you on the first day basis with, who knows your preferences because then they get like a like our public service that improves over time, like they get to know you when they get to know your style sea, where is like if you're using one of those companies, like you even know who's editing your show and going to like the same notes that you give him last year because they switched out people, you just like IT, it's not that good. So I think you really want to have like just one person.

IT has worked for me. He is super reliable. He gets a done on time, and he never takes time off, almost ever.

Or when he does, he is like coming to be off next week. And I I could get you two episodes this week, which happens like once every two years. That's the danger. If you do go with an individual, is that they get sick, is that anything happens? I have a single point of failure. So I do like the idea product services, if you're not as picky as you and I basically, if this was even more of a side project IT IT just takes all the headache away.

I was talking to sampoong, who's one of the the host of my first million podcast, and I was asking them, okay, what do you get? Your intro music, your show, it's great that kind of sounds like an actual song. Where is like most podcast that we pull IT off like these royalty free you know, music sites and the all kind of sounds the same and he's like, I don't know to be onest.

I don't even know what that sounds like. I like you. Listen to your show is like, never like what he's like. Not a single time have I ever gone back and listen to a single episode, my show, and they're like one hundred and seven episodes at crazy. I can't imagine doing that, but i'm also jealous of the freedom that he has to just cracked out episodes and just not care. And the dollar numbers are pretty astonish.

So it's working. Wow, yeah, I couldn't do that because i'm too much into the iteration. I listen to the episode to nit pick myself and figure out how can this be Better? how? What should I have cut what question I mean, all the time i'll list to interview and like, why did I not ask them this? Was I not paying attention? Like it's so obvious to me.

I think that's probably a signal i've gotten Better because I used to not be virgin. Everyone, I think come getting Better. And now when I go back, it's like kind of cringe worthy naturally in conversation.

I'm a very affirming person. I do a lot not if we talk and you know that totally, totally corn know. I mean, i've had dinner that you know how I talk. I can't do that in interviews because it's I have to cut IT all out. And so it's almost the an unnatural keenest of conversation because in an interview is distracting if i'm sitting there affirming the the interview and you'll notice that I uni both do this, I think now where they'll finish talking, you say nothing and then you say the next question so tell me about your childhood, you know and it's IT feels weird because if again.

if we are at dinner and I did that.

you'd like not how you talk but IT sounds natural in in interview right to one .

of the things that i've been trying to change a little bit more in my interviews just seen that some of the other shows that I like a lot. They're a lot more conversational. There are not interview shows, but I kind of like the cats. And the market difference is like there just aren't that many questions. Know the questions are a little more authentic, but it's mostly just like two people on oggling at each other just making statements and then ripping off the other statement and then just rifting .

off that one yeah the key with that format I found is you have to have someone who is good on the miche has experience like if you get someone on who the first time it's not gonna work because they are not going to bounce back and forth, they don't know how to fill air in an effective way, right? Because I used to back in the five hundred eight episodes O, I filled there and kind of a dumb way, right? I D had notes and things weren't that interesting but you and I ve done enough episode, you know, just like you have been arrest on a couple weeks ago.

I heard that was like, both of you are like pro, right? And I have dear crime on, I have crag huit from castle. You know any of these folks who IT can be just back and forth that's where you hear in all in right is like there's one or two really veteran podcasts ers. A couple of the other guys don't talk that much and you can tell them, you know pull in them along in the show.

The best podcast guest is a podcast host, one hundred percent the time that goes. Well.

that's that's the other funny thing. Have you've been invited on a show with kind of a new interviewer? You like someone who's in their first hundred twenty episodes a bunch of times the whole time you're like i'm just going to get you know you're like guiding and you you're not actually answering the question they asked is not a very good question but you're trying to help the show be Better .

yeah because you want to ever so neon like sounds good. The hardest thing for me is like I don't want to go on somebody y's podcast and then not tweet about IT. I feel bad but I yeah so I .

have literally inserted i'll answer the question and then be like and I have some other thoughts on this tent like because I know it's like this really needs to be here, but they're not going to ask to follow .

up you're actually tweet about, I guess he said, IT, i'm considering creating an alphabetic index of the maria topics that you ve discussed on your past of the years, which is related to you were talking about how people go through the backlog. And i've thought about this a ton too. I'm curious what your goals are like. Why do that want to look like?

I was inspired by a podcast that i've listened to for several years titled money for the rest of us. And in fact, he and I is really good at the one personal finance pocket I still listen to. I contacted him.

He started in twenty fourteen, I believe, and I contact them. I was like, hey, i'm started for the rest of us and he said, sorry about the name. I didn't realize you were already out there, but turns out, you know, he's really good and to listen to IT.

So he's creating an index and it's almost up the index at the back of book where it's a alphabetic. You go a and it's just a bunch of topics, you know art works and you know sales funds that would be under us. But whatever, you know, you get all the all the topics and you can click through and IT has the episode now, the thing i'm struggling with there, so I can have a system, produce her iron, go do that.

He could spend a few weeks and he can index IT. I'm struggling with this. So what does that take you to? Does that take you to the transcript? And, you know, have to search.

Does that take you to have a certain point of the transcript? Does IT try to take you to a certain point in the audio or audio click. Because that's going to be a disaster.

I can't invest the time to do. So that's what i'm kind of if he about IT is like, would people use IT? And so I did I I guess I asked online at what format would you like to see?

I didn't ask online that people would use IT, but I do know that we get a lot of searches is on start up to the rest of us because with full transcript everything. So you can literally go in type in sales funds or email marketing or the name of a guest and you get all the episodes. So I know that that's used and I used at myself, what i'm not sure is what people use in index, you know.

But I think the idea of an index is that you don't have to think of the search term. It's basically you can kind of skim through IT and and be like, oh, i'd actually love to hear robs or guests mikes take you know, on this topic. That would be the benefit. What do you think do you think people would use that? I mean, would you use that show?

And the dex, you know, first they have like searched stuff first round up com, which is an amazing resource that just like let's take every topic related to start ups, fun raising marketing, product design as like one hundred topics and there's just like let's get the best blog post on the web about that topic and we would just like, you know, have all of them in a list so you can go there at any point time to like, figure out anything.

And it's like that must have taken so much work to build so much effort. One into that is so useful. And like, I never use IT, I know it's there I know can solve my problems and I wonder why sometimes and I think it's because when I encounter, like I start a problem, like my first thought isn't go to this database.

It's like let me talk to a friend when we talk to my brother or let me like ask a commentor or let me like search google or let me just sit down and like figure IT out myself half the time like that's my resource. And so i'm somewhat skeptical about index is is why I haven't built one for reni hackers because I like, well, I just never use them, but I think people would use them. Some people for sure would know if the home page of any hack is like gigantic director. Your start of topics for helpful people would probably use IT. And so i'm conflicted.

I think I am too. And for me it's psychosis with a hypothesis. What do you do to test that? Well, I can ask on twitter, would you use an index? And i'm dubious about whatever eighty percent of say, yes, no one will use that right or the opposite.

So what I was trying to do was talking to again as just to produce iron and and saying, what's the minimum? What's the M V P of that? Now could we just get a through d index? Or could we may just get fifty episodes index and you click through and IT takes you to the transcription, you can listen the epsom, if you want.

So then we could see, do people use, if no one does work out, what, hundred, hundreds of dollars in labor or whatever? IT is the exception in the reason? I think that maybe some people would use IT as on twitter, I often will get a question or on any hackers or respond to something or whatever. Hacker ws just any of these forms where someone ask a question about being acquired or sales function, marketing, whatever. And I will say, White, I talked for forty minutes in this episode yeah.

this whole idea of sort of content reuses, I think, criminally unrealized in podcast because I didn't think of about this with any hackers. For example, if we wanted to do like an andy hackers booklets like, let's know, talk about the books at all and hackers like the most every single time i've a pocket, so after I finish recording and say, hey rob, what does some book that have been influential to you record that and it's like an actually like a monitor two for you.

It's not gonna ter, but by this point I would have like two hundred you know different people who told me their favor books. So they're favorite resources and they are favorite whatever. And I could easily like key OS ship after A V A to put together resource somewhere else. And it's so easy to do that. But I I haven't really use that part of my player very much.

I know, I know and I think not being strategic and plank you and I what we're saying is we kind of play checkers instead of plane chess. And I think that's a bit of a mistake or or it's a mistake, maybe a strong word, but i'll tell you what I regret. I regret having done this pot started to us best for seven years now and not having been more strategic about and not having spent more time.

And what I don't regret is the last two years, because I I have double down on all times of stuff for read on the website, changed the hosting, whatever, got different analytics. I was going to say Better analytics. But I don't know about human pois analytics suck.

And I use three different analytics providers and they gave me wildly different numbers, like a hundred percent different from one to the next. And i'm just like, I don't know how many listeners we have, I can give you an idea, but I don't know for sure. You know.

are you uncharitable? Yeah.

charitable is the one. Does that tell you?

Listen, account charted attempts to basically aggregate your nutrition like every podcast player. And so like all of your M P three links on your podcast, you will go through a charitable link and they use like what do they call like the I A B V two certified statistics, which like requires them to like to do a bunch of stuff to try to give you the most accurate download.

Councils, they need to filter out butch traffic, and they need to filter out like a repeat plays on the same I P address and like as far as i'm aware, like pot cash, it's the wild west like I was on this we can start of Jason colon and was like how many done you getting as a couple hundred thousand raptorex really uh who are your hosting provider? Uh, which is draw M P three on in an amazon s 3 bucket and we just count the number of downloads and like that's not accurate at that's like the least accurate possible way to do IT。 And so those numbers are probably inflated like five ten x at least. So who know, right? You might tell advertisers that if they get and they might be able to charge based on these rates, and nobody really knows.

right? And that's the thing that so no, I haven't. I obvious ly not uncharitable because I I thought i'd heard of IT and i'm using a service that tells me where we are in the apple podcast charts. IT tells me where I rank because I care about that um for discovery it's .

a good time to be. Podcasting is one of those like mediums that if you invested in ten years ago, which you basically did, it's a risk, you know it's going to be around. And like obviously, it's bigger than ever see monkeys apples get into IT, uh, more than they ever have spotify getting into IT, more than have google got their podcast player.

I like some other trends. I saw you tweet about your oculus quest VR. VR is near and dear to my heart as i've been so bullsh on VR for so many years and IT is not taken off. IT has not become anywhere near what I would hope IT would be. And I just got an ele quest, I think, in january and I was super excited.

It's the oculus quest two was at the one you have yeah and it's three hundred dollars. And then if if you are going to use IT with multiple people because I have there's four of us in the family with two kids and you get the little head head band, I think it's fifty box that's justice soever can use IT.

But if even more bowler's spent one hundred and fifty and you get the one with the battery pack that attaches to and to give you extra atterly life, my kids love IT, and we will attach a beats saber or something else to actually crank up to to experts. So they get some type of exercise in the winner they can do IT and you, they enjoy, but they have some move around a bunch have been plane through what's there's a star wars darth vader thing are in the second part of natral. Og, it's so deep and you're not attached to anything.

All you just buying up on your phone and it's fifteen to thirty dollars usually. And then suddenly it's just in your headset and and i'm kind of become the i'm an old guy now, you know, i'm not that old, but like, I don't like new thing. It's like of my love and I put this thing on the first time.

I was like, this is unbelievable, like VR has arrived with this thing because you're not attached to any either no wires, right? This is that the amazing thing and the graphs aren't they're not like the rift, you know or not like I mean, there are other wear heads that so much Better, but he does not slow down for me. I'm bullish, ed.

Now i've always been bullish on all new stuff because i'm a technologist right now, want this up to work. But i've been really disappointed with the V, R, headsets in the cost. And i'm not going to a big windows machine that attached IT to IT, but I think V, R and AR are arriving like as we speak.

Yeah, i've been hoping that they would. And I got the quest and I unlike you, I have not continued to use IT. It's I going to draw over there.

interesting. And it's like i'm just so excited about like I wanted to be great. And the experience actually is pretty like the first time when I put on my headset.

You can kind choose like your home environment, which your background gna be. And like I shows us like cool cave and a canyon and would like a living room and like stone tables and stuff like I was is awesome. And then like the apps, for me it's just most of games and I like games as as much as an x person.

But like i'm thinking, like, okay, I want to be like floating in space with like ten monitors around me, like managing like andy hackers and my twitter account in everything, right? I would like to see the coolest vir experience possible. And for me, the APP aren't there.

Like I can be productive. And V R, like it's not Better for, like, Better for me to chat to my friends on my phone, then he is to chat. And A V R. Which is crazy if you read any sort of like size I book about VR. They go on all the coolest apps like everything makes way more sense because it's an entire digital world creative from the ground up. So i'm bullish on IT, but I think the apps aren't like there is no twitter for VR, there is no a sign for VR, there is no gmail for VR. And so you just kind like end up playing other games.

I would agree with that. I think that the fidelity of paint, a writing or typing or anything, it's not there yet. And in fact, there's a Whiteboard APP because this was a big thing, Derek. And our building drip is when we were separated for any life of time, is like we can't wipe board together.

This is really hard because he, I was sitting from my pad for three hours, you know, and just like hash out really our problems, and I kept some once VR once we can VR heads set into a White board, we never need to see each other again. And and there is a White board APP. And the fidelity ties too low.

You cut when you write. It's you're like writing with a big crown because it's the detection. It's something there, but it'll get there, right? IT has to IT has to get there.

And once IT gets there, I think IT, it'll be changing. I agree with you. I wanted to be able to work in IT.

But what I will say is that when covet hit, and we couldn't do even the tiny seed group, tiny seed microcomputer is of us, we wanted to get together in person to hang out. You have wonder, two day hang out time. Instead, we did IT in VR, and we did a few games that are, that are CoOperative games like this one.

They are preparing food right in your chop, chop, chop. And then you, like, came the sandwich to the person next year. And they are supposed to put the cheese and the thing on.

And the customers are all healthy if you do IT wrong. And so we were gaming, but also hanging out and talking in between. And we were chatting. And IT was away for us, not because the forever ssem sit on a zoom call and it's like, this is great. You know, it's like, let's do more work.

I feel like i'm working right now, but at least then we could elvan assessments and right where you like shootings from far away look so that that was nice. IT was like teamer evening teamer retreats, you know, each of us having a trusty adult beverage and hang out. So I think that's about that valuable thing.

I can't imagine like if you wanted to like craft and experience from the ground up to just make people feel like they're some sort of corporate or environment while talking like you would make you look exactly like zoom, just everything is ugly. Everything is part just completely slit down like they're aggressively trying to board the hell out of you.

But i'm a fan, a multitasking like my brother and I will do calls pretty much every day, and we usually just use telegram because we will be typing in telegram, and you clack like one burden, and you on a calls is lowest friction. But like, it's hard for me to do to sit there and talk and do natheless else, like giving right now, like animated and like move my hands and stuff. So like hand, like were both like passing around our apartments.

And in a half the time I was owning out, because we trying to multitask and do other things, I were talking. But if I was like playing some cool VR game at the same time, like that will be super interesting. And the reason that doesn't happen for me is because like the friction to get, like go get my V R headset makes sure each charge put an honest too high. But if I had these other productivity apps, I was kind of like there all day, like i'm going to start a screen all day and might also be a VR screen, then IT ouldn't be I friction because I already have to had set on and just press button.

And like a no, I think that I think the friction pieces is a big part of IT. Interesting did bit that all in ten eventually related you are sing because on the same way where I need to be moving around, or i'd like to move my hands, I like to talk. I have switched my my si savo instead sava tiny sea back company.

I've switch my savic link now to where IT does not default. I A zoom IT default to in your phone number. I will call you because i'm just kind of dumb, because I can walk, I can go. I live near a lake and like it's sixty five and Sunny out today and I want i've been walking almost every day for just an hour and not even is exercise because I do other stuff harder.

Walking is not exercise for me, items in decent enough shape, but I just want to be outside and not sit in front of a damn computer for eight hours a day and not stare at the screen, right? So i'm going a little and logue it's an experiment. I'm only about a weekend to IT. So far it's been amazing and I have no comments about IT. Obviously, there are some that need to be zoom because you're going to share screens, you're going to do actually, you going to walk through google sheet or whatever.

Um there's also these a lot of these companies out there that are trying to make these like team meetings Better. Gather gathered our town, which is the coolest. I think it's like so fun.

You have a little virtual world and you're a little character. You move around and you know when your characters next to somebody else is character, then to connect you in a nadia chat. So it's almost like know a real experience. And there's a lot of rather competitors to this that are trying to basically capitalize on the fact that everybodys working remote, but zoom is super boring, super dry and just isn't engaging.

Yeah for sure. So we use them for microcomputers about a month ago. And to your point, it's like an eight bit version or sixteen bit version of like elda or old king quest game.

And people were blown away. Most people now we had some carmodys who were like, this is super like a fat, right? This is too kitchi like for a professional conference, but only a handful. And overwhelmingly, aside from that, those few people, people loved that because I was IT does kind of almost a little bit replicate.

The whole track is my favorite thing about sort of coveted ecosystem apps. And maybe like two years ago, I was like pushing IT ford even have video chat at your company. You know, people just didn't do IT the adoption.

He was super low music, were working from the office and then will go IT. It's like, okay, well, now everybody, he's on zoom. So like we can think about the next level is and it's gather and it's all these other tools are just look cool or like a little bit more fun.

Now we have a clubhouse and we have twitter spaces. Like what if we have audio only like the fact that, like remote conversations has just been so main strained now means that people can just push the on bulut and trying new things. And so I think that's what's kind of fun.

You know, like the idea that you can build them up that looks like a video game and real companies are using IT. Like that would be unheard of two years ago. But like now I fine, let's try IT.

You are like a lot of people building like these icebreakers er apps. Were they like companies are all remote right now. Their employees don't know each other. I don't get to talk to each other. Like, what if we put like a goat on resume on your resume video and you could like talk to this go know what if we like no design like this kind of like cool icebreakers, ers and people are making real money doing this kind of stuff where, you know, which is in the past, not a viable business yeah .

picks and shovels to build. You know, if you're in the gold rush, do you want to be the minor or do you want or prospect or do you want to sell picks and travels? And that i've viewed SaaS picks and shovels forever rights fifteen years ago when I started talking about that.

And that's really the bat that we're making with tiny seed is that, you know and we get we get more we don't get more applicants. We get more applicants with revenue every batch we've done so far and even more revenue than you know, batch one and batch two had more revenue and bat three more revenue than batch two. And so there is this trend of more people using sas today than a year go. Are those going to know those users going to only go away or those needs going to go away?

I think we see you the same thing with the funding environment where from what I said, that seems like so much money looking to go into startups right now. Like everyone is investing in every start. I can riverside just announced anything in the home page in now, like they just raised nine and half million dollars and there was some crazy evaluation.

And like every start, just a over one hundred million dollars now. And like two years ago, there was not the case. I mean, funding was a bad, but IT wasn't as easy as IT is now. And I think what tiny seeds just finished your second fund and you raise.

how did you raise? Want to be in twenty seven point seven million.

that's crazy. That's say about of money.

And our first one was four at four and a half or four point four. And I remember when we first started raised in the first one, I told my coffee under A R. I was like, I think if we can raise like a couple million dollars to do a Better like i'll be great and we ve got to form at for this is amazing and now here we are you know five six times the size mony's cheap er right now and I won't be forever so that's the thing i've been through boom and bus.

And a lot of folks like if if you've only been a professional for ten years, you don't remember two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and you don't remember the dot com crash right of two thousand, and you don't have to remember him to take this advice, like in two thousand, IT felt like money was free, and I was being sent to other people with the business plan. We're just getting all this money to do whatever, right? And then IT eventually crashed, and from from that crash rose google and I think facebook a few years later.

But blog spotted and blogger and youtube came out of that a few years later. and. And then sass came out of that in two thousand and five to two thousand ten.

And then there was a big crashing there again. There was a bunch of money, bunch of money, because I was cheap, because the feed was printing IT. And you could borrow at historic lows and then crashed two thousand and eight, two thousand nine.

Now the places I didn't crash, like if your boots dropping in your super cash efficient, you might see a few rough months or you might even see six rough months. But if you're not just burning through cash like you'll stay alive and you come out away stronger on the other side of that, right? And you can slink shot and it's good to have it's good to have that wind to try back.

And you're right, money, as you right now, don't think IT will be forever. And I do. Are we in a bubble? I mean, kind of we're kind of we go through cycles. You know, if you think about at the last bus was thirteen years ago now, I mean, we really haven't had a major you know, we had the obviously last march during covet, there was a one month crash. And then in twenty sixteen january, there was a kind of a one month crash, but really a sustained bar market.

It's an argument to be be made that there could be some sort of almost reversible shift like things will always go in cycles. There will always be boom and bus periods. But there are some things that are happening nowadays are like just different, right? Like people are more used to the internet and more, I think, confident, interact based companies today than they were ten, twenty years ago. It's easier for the average person to invest like so many more people are becoming Angel investors today and were in the past.

There's now like increasing crowd funding limits so you can crowd funding start up like cycle from gum row, basically raised like fire or six million dollars or something from just random people who weren't even like I don't know this, they're just putting in like five or ten bucks you know they're like, okay, all best, who who knows know this sounds cool. Like my mom asked me about investing in startups. I wasn't asking that ten years ago. And so maybe to some degree like this, the number of people who are trying to get in at an early stage is just gonna ep going up and up and up. And I don't know if the number of people creating startups is increasing at the same rate.

I think there's two factors at play or multiple factors. One is you're right, the crowd funding, even the kick starters. Um you know that whole ecosystem has allowed there to be way more products created.

And you can say there are way more table top games, because table top gaming is like one of the biggest kickstarter of categories. I should know that back, literally hundreds of, remember how we remember how we marked to me profusely last time about my auto addiction. I have like eight hundred audible books.

You do not wannsee I believe it's two hundred fifty three nick charges back. I do think crowd funding will start up. Is gonna similar things? I do think there will be a pretty big failure here in the next six to twelve months.

Itll like to be an out out scan or it'll be someone over representing or i'll just be something that fails big and that happened with the start and go go and that kind of level set people's expectations. People backed off on things. There is a lot of growth happening now.

But man, there is across the board because there's so much money, there's none of us are traveling, most people are not eating out, none of us are taking vacations. We have money to put into other things. And so I on collectibles, and if you look at sports cards, you look at comic books, you look at art, it's all crazy like it's these things are thirty, fifty to fifty percent over the past twelve month.

You look at startups similar more money going in that. You look at crypto bo in information to fifty, sixty or you know a sixty k in the past sixty eight months. There's just a lot of money to going in that is great for us in the short term.

It's not sustainable in long term, but there's secular trends and there's a cyclical and secular short term and cyclical. Are these long term changes, right? That the two things we're holding, holding intention is that crypto and collectables and maybe money going into startups can't sustain itself like IT is today.

But to your point, there are a lot more people coming in with crowd funding and and the accreditation laws are hopefully going to be changing. You know to wear more people can be a credit is not just a revenue. Best thing it's a you can take a test, right and become a credit or to raise a fund.

When we raise tiny see fund to one of the biggest limiting factors, we could have raised a lot more money than twenty seven hundred and seven, but we could only have ninety nine investors. That was our limit, and that's what kept us from raising forty, fifty million. We had to turn a bunch of there were people who said, I want to write two hundred thousand dollars ack, hundred fifty thousand dollar track that we had to turn away because if you do, just do the math, hundred people, twenty seven seven million is two hundred and seven seven thousand dollar minimum.

Our minimum was not that high. But that's a kind of thinking. You got over a fifty million dollars from nine and nine people.

I want to kay a peace, right? So we are actually, we started. We get in touch with nonprofit and it's an entrepreneurial organization. And we have had phone calls with the sec to try to change this. S. C, C is told us you have to lobby congress where you have to get, like this is a law, like you literally need an act of congress to fix this. Something like we thought that I could do IT.

So now they're like, we're get in touch with someone, the hill, and we're gonna try to be you've gather a group of you know general partners of of funds also think that the ninety nine investor limit is a problem. It's keeping folks are being able to invest. So we're hoping to change that over a few years.

Yeah I of this stuff, the crowd funding limit got raised a the out of rules are becoming and credited investors you mentioned sort of getting lex and also these other limits, which just is going to mean more and more people being able to invest and typically people think about, okay, like the stock market, but now it's a okay well, crypto as well and also like maybe Angel, interesting in the startups.

And so it's crazy to me that there's so much money going in and there's just so many different things you can do. You know you don't have to necessarily create a sas business. And this is what to try. Ed, in true thing that you, I have been talking about for years, you maybe make a table top game and put in on kick starter. You can make some sort of crazy crap to that.

You can started a newsletter, right? I bet you you know a couple years to now, people be raising lots of money to build news letter companies or today like that's not really a saying that people do to get of this individualism pursuit. And so i'm optimistic.

I just like saying things moving in, shaking and things changing up. And I spent a lot time, I talking about what I would be doing if I wasn't doing in the hackers. Know what I do another start up, but I do some sort of unicom and targeted thing.

Know what I do, like some just random side project what I write you know ah and I just like a million things you can do now that like you couldn't done years ago because the market just wasn't there. There were enough people consuming and I would have been much harder. You see a lot of companies, obviously, you just raise a thirty million dollar funds, you've got to invest that and a lot more companies.

What do you think and the hackers should be thinking about? Know what are you interested in? What are some of the trends and spaces that are sort of up and coming that you think people can basically build successful business?

Anything that enables remote work is big. Remote work is not going away and it's only gna be more adapted. The creator space, the maker space, like you're saying newsletters, these things are all on on our radar.

And the third space isn't just one space, but there's almost this refresh in a bunch of different verticals that happens every so many years. So like constant context started in one thousand, nine hundred thousand and nine, two thousand, and then male trip came in two thousand and nine. And it's like we're the new their new interface, a new approach and then you saw dripping converted come in like twenty, where we like thirty four thousand and fifteen and it's like refreshing. So these bitten now you see like savi calor I with their grammer is that calendar five, ten years ago.

And then transistor replacing the pod castle in companies.

Yep, transistor and castles, right? Replacing with lib son, I think is a big one. I think there are a lot of spaces that are right for a refresh, if that makes sense. And and IT takes here's a thing like, you know, I always talk about the startup approach and if you're if if you're very first APP don't go into these big competitive spaces when they hated, I hated large competitor because it's really hard and usually need to either raise some money or have some I have a lot of experience or be a really good at maker. If it's your first time, pick a small idea, I would probably go to an APP store uh or you know plugged in repository because your distribution taking curve.

But if you are at that point works like i'm going to really tackle something big and you do want to be, you know, in these ecosystems, I think looking at these large spaces where competence to get into a little crafty and Frankly, a sass APP that maybe six, seven years old, it's a little crafty. They're usually a little crafty. Most are not maintain.

Most you can keep the U. S. And I can't keep the new paradise because of just legacy gets almost built into them.

right? Yeah there's a as we take away from the state of independent savor that you did for twenty twenty one and you going to talk about where are people are getting their ideas from and then like the average sort of revenue based on where you source ideas. And the highest category was I copy the competitor, which is shocking to me.

I didn't expect that to be like, that beat out. I presso ld my product. I beat out like I had.

No, I bought this company or I asked my audience what to do. Or I built in a prototype MVP. Like the best way to sort about an idea. Apparently it's just copy what's already working from the competition.

great. Yeah, I so I wouldn't expected i've bought the product to kind of number one and then copying big number two. Now copy is a story that's the rubbage we used when I if someone wants to copy, do I think that's a available approach? Absolutely, I do.

But I think you need one of two things or both to do that one. And just a straight copy makes no sense, right? Because everyone's going to keep using the one with the brand.

So you have to either have some pretty like proprietary traffic channels like you're really good at seo or you're really good at integrations or you have a network in audience that you can use, you can build in public or you have a really unique feature or positioning and that so you can take like male champ was and is still is the number one email marketing in the world right by volume. And so when trip was launching, we didn't just say, look, we're male chain clown. We said we're male champ plus automation, right? We're male champ plus something they don't have that people were asking us for later on.

Of course, we position that was our positioning and then people like the male chips cheaper. And then we realize we want to position ourselves against the more expensive competitors, which were at the infusion of subspace market. That's a lesson that I learned.

But so you need one of those two things. Just a copy. No, but a copy with, yeah, a preparatory chal, you know, kind of a unique position that presents with people.

cool. I T, I like casual chats, and I like listen as where I can go to learn about.

Watch up to you. I absolutely have folks. One, i'm listen to me talk about this kind of stuff every week for thirty five minutes.

That starts for the rest of us. Stock com. And rob, all in that com.

If you know, they wanna keep up with me, I write essays now and again. And I guess twitter, right? yeah. Rob walling, maybe that's a good one.

alright. Thanks again. up.

absolutely. Thanks for me on in.