okay, so the way this happened was I think you were complaining into the void that growth
has slowed or stopped and and WTF and someone said, you should talk to somebody and one

way or another we got connected into let's do a podcast where you show the entire world
all your numbers and travails and we'll go through it and I'll be an asshole and maybe by

the end of it ~ we can figure something out.

So here we are, which is very strange.

~ have you ever done anything like this?

No, I think it's like like somebody looking at my numbers completely, you know, like open
and talking about this I think it's the first time probably

Yeah, you know, people are always worried about giving the numbers.

I don't know why, maybe because they're worried that they're not good enough.

But what I figure is whatever they are, most people watching don't have numbers that are
even that good.

So they're impressed and in fact wanting to be inspired by something that you're doing or
get to the place where you are.

And people that have let's just say they have a bigger company, which does not mean
they're more successful, but let's suppose that's the case.

They know how hard it was to get there.

They don't look down and say, you know, that's terrible.

yeah, I was there.

We're the same kind of person.

I you know, we're we're we're we're connected in a fundamental human way.

Anyway, so but it's still scary nevertheless, 'cause it is.

It's private normally.

~ so What do you want to accomplish today?

besides the fact that it's not growing.

Like like are you looking to grow again?

And that's what you want to come away with today, is how to do that, or just diagnose it
or what?

It's an interesting question in itself.

I'm happy to see you.

I appreciate taking time to talk and to discuss all this.

You're way more experienced in this ~ and I can learn a lot.

So when I posted this post about growth,

It was kind of like, you my recurring topic of the past few months, maybe even more, I
don't know.

But one of my initial goals was to build business on my own and to have this 10K MRR,
whatever.

And then I reached this goal and maybe I wasn't ambitious, you know, I don't know.

But then I started to grow it, to grow it.

And then realized, you know, like it's pretty boring.

I noticed that there is no...

like the growth itself is not growing.

And it started to trouble me, like is there some fundamental issue?

Maybe I can do something?

Because if I project all numbers, I see there will be plateau.

And I know right now that I won't be past this plateau.

I have kind of a new goal, you know, like in my mind

now one thousand one hundred thousand dollars of emerald and it feels for me like that
having the current numbers it doesn't lead me to this goal at least like maybe i don't

know in five ten years 20 years still not bad still don't complain and super happy about
everything yes but it feels for me like a real interesting challenge to tackle

a partner or somebody with whom I could discuss this and to see on the outside, especially
with experience, it would be super helpful.

Yeah, so that's my idea.

So you wanna get to a hundred K MRR,

but at the current course and speed you won't get there and it not even close and so you
gotta do something different 'cause if you keep doing the same things you're doing, you

won't get there.

Yes, yes, yes.

And maybe there is some, maybe, you know, kind of collateral questions to this.

Maybe I also could sell it.

Maybe I could build a new product.

I don't know.

But that's like another, you know, like philosophical question on this.

so so

what what that does is you're jumping right from the problem to like what should I do
about it?

In other words, ~ growth has slowed.

that's something we have to really understand, like why, what's going on.

And then separately the question is what do you want to do about it?

Like one thing you could do is and so I don't want to do this company ever again.

~ that's one path to to deal with that.

Another path is to solve whatever it is we found in the problem of growth.

That's another and and indeed keep running the company.

That's another solution.

But how do you even know what that option is if you haven't identified in detail what's
causing the the problem with growth, right?

So so I hear you on that.

That's right.

But you can't really tackle that until you figure out what the problem is.

Now some people are too dogmatic about this thing where you have to first identify the
problem in great detail and only then go do the solutions.

Well, I I just said that.

So so like in general, I think that's right.

But the way human brains really work is what you just did.

When I want to jump to the solution, and then I jump back, but wait a minute, and you jump
back to the problem and you jump back.

And that's is how we think.

And it's good because one can inform the other.

Because, for example, you start saying, Well, maybe I'll sell the company, you go down
that path, and you realize I would get so little for the company, and I'm just making this

up because we haven't talked about it yet.

I would get so little for the company.

I don't like that.

Okay, well.

We still go back to identifying the problem, but now you have a renewed motivation to
solve the problem because you didn't like one of the other options.

So this kind of a path is normal.

In general, it is better to figure out what's going on and and really get to what some
people call the crux of the problem.

Like okay, the general problem is growth is slowed or stopped.

But why exactly, like what exactly is the challenge that's going on?

We get to that, because that's the thing to solve specifically.

And then we find the solution.

That's usually a better path.

So it's okay if we bounce around a little, but like in general, that's a better ~ way to
organize it.

So do you want me to pull up this dashboard so we can get the general numbers out there?

Yes, let's try, let's

Okay, here we go.

So ~

okay.

Approximately, which this not approximately, or is it?

Like this is the numbers, right?

most of them are correct numbers ~

the MRR is thirty two K, which is great.

I mean, really, like you just said, when you started the company, you wanted it to get to
ten K of MRR.

It's three times that.

So I guess my first question actually is what's wrong with that?

Like you said, I wanna I wanna get to a hundred, but what's wrong with thirty two?

It's a great question.

getting to 10k MRR actually was kind of, you know, like identity crisis because I was
living in this perpetual identity of achieving this 10k and then I achieved it and then I

felt like kind of empty.

So I kept seeking answers like what can I do next and so on and I kept improving the
product, working on terms and so on and so on.

And I realized, okay, so...

I started to slowly to realize that my business is separate from me and it can have goals
on its own and for business it would be better to grow and because of many reasons like

inflation ~

Like, even if I'm not growing in 10 years, probably the money, the business earning now,
it will be two times less of purchase.

Yeah, this isn't the reason.

This is not the reason.

I'll tell you why.

I'll

tell you why.

Because if you said, because if it were really true that you were happy with 32, except
for inflation, then the challenge that you would say is, I'm very happy, but I need to

grow 3% a year, or I won't keep up with inflation.

How should I grow 3% a year, you would ask?

But you already know how to do that.

That's not the problem.

That's a that's a just that's a rationalization for the actual thing that you feel.

You want to get to a hundred, that that's triple what it is now.

So to me, when I hear that number, what I hear is over a million dollars a year.

That's what I heard.

That's what you're thinking, right?

Yeah.

So ~ but you also said, and I know, I know we'll get to the growth, but

You said my whole identity was getting to 10k.

I got there, and then I felt empty, i.e., that wasn't really a fulfilling goal after all.

And your conclusion after that was: well, when I get to 100, I won't feel empty.

It'll be different that time.

Which it might be, because there's another zero.

So you might be right.

~ but probably you're wrong.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, with you know that when I know that this one not like I will not get
fulfilled from this one but but if I separate like business from my identity like from who

I am and having a separate entity like

business as a separate entity and having it's growing for me it's it's kind of like a nice
challenge you know like a nice puzzle to solve like in that way yeah so it's it sounds

nice and i'm building

saying.

You're saying I you you've converted your mindset

from this is who I am to I have this thing called a business.

it's a game and it's a good game because pays me when I do well.

and and that's a different mindset now.

And so it's a healthier mindset where you're not looking for personal fulfillment.

So that okay, that's fine.

I still kind of don't believe you because I don't know any founder who doesn't care at
all.

Actually, that's not true.

I know some people that flip things and I guess they don't care, but I only half believe
you, but

It it it's fine.

So okay, so so there really isn't a reason other than playing the game and making more
money.

It's not inflation.

Do isn't there another reason or is it just I just want a successful business because that
makes me impressive and puts enough money in the bank that I can, you let's just let's not

say it makes me happy or fulfilled, but let's say it removes all kinds of things that
money can fix.

Is that it?

Yes, it's interesting.

You get pretty quickly to the core, you know, like of the...

this stuff because I actually don't believe it when I person what I say about like a
narrative but I'm like in the process of building it like it's it's kinda that's one of

the reasons like that was original post on x-high post that yes it's like contemplating
about what I want to do and it's like it feels like a narrative that pulls me you know

this one and yes I like actually I'm I'm happy like everything is good you know like but
but but okay

not good or we wouldn't be talking.

Okay, so it

w we'll we'll leave it for now, but but you see that this is not clear actually.

And ~ the reason it matters is because later on you want to talk about should I sell the
company it should in other words, should I what do I want to keep playing this game or

not?

And so that's when all these questions we're just asking do matter, right?

Because if running the company is fulfilling, then selling it may not be.

But it could be vice versa.

So so these things do matter later.

Like they don't they don't necessarily matter in terms of diagnosing what what's happening
with growth, but they will matter later.

And it just gives me some context of how you're thinking.

So okay.

I think I think I understand enough.

So you have a thousand customers and a third of a million in in annual revenue, thirty-two
K in MRR.

And it's very profitable, of course, because I'm I'm guessing it's just you.

There's no employees and so this is just normal business expenses, or maybe there's a
consultant, or what is the few expenses that result in that profit?

Yes, currently it's like infrastructure, servers, many soft tools and some marketing.

So not people.

Yeah.

When

you say I want to get to a hundred K, are you thinking and still have no employees?

~ It doesn't matter, I think.

It doesn't matter?

It

does matter.

No, no, I mean like if it would be Let's say it can be it can be with employees.

Yes, it can be it can be

Well but two minutes ago were you thinking that you needed to hire someone soon?

No.

Hm.

Why not?

Wanna to her?

You have the money?

Why not to her?

I just like, because I don't feel the reason it.

Yes, you yes, there is.

You

just said you're there's a huge problem, which is you're not growing and you wanna you
wanna triple the company and it's not growing at all.

There's obviously a need.

But you didn't think another person could be helpful in that.

Whether whether that other person is focused on growth like marketing, or whether that
person is focused on tech so that you could focus on marketing, regardless, that did not

cross your mind.

Which which is interesting because it tells me like that's not the way you're thinking of
solving the problem.

And maybe you're right, maybe not.

maybe it makes sense to go solo to a hundred.

I mean, especially nowadays, that's that's more possible than ever, I think.

But I'm just trying to get a sense of what you're how you're thinking about it.

Like if you had three people if it was a hundred K and you had three people that you
worked with and let's even suppose you like them, just for fun, ~ does that sound good?

Or you're like, ~ that's not what I meant.

Yes, yes, I'm a bit afraid, yes.

~

sometimes sometimes the issue with is we don't know what they would do.

In other words, like I didn't hire someone because I don't know what to tell I don't know
who I would hire or what I would tell them to do, which again is going back to like I'm

not actually sure what the problem is, so I don't know what I'm solving.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Maybe, but that's not that that's not emphatic.

So maybe not.

of course I see the revenue churn at nine percent and I can already tell that that's my
main problem.

~ maybe you've already come to that conclusion.

Let's find out.

now here's what's funny.

I'm looking here at this NRR growth chart, and what I see is growth.

Now this is a one year chart, right?

Twelve months.

yes, yes, 20, 20 months.

and so all I see is it's going up with occasional bouts of not going up.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

So I have a but I have several questions.

One is it's been going up for six months straight, and then you had one month where it
went sideways, and your conclusion is it's not growing anymore.

But what I see is five out of the last six months it grew.

So why are you saying it's not growing anymore?

was about the...

it's maybe because of my language or how I speak.

It was about the...

the growth of growth.

Like the growth itself, like...

every month the product is adding like one thousand dollars monthly, yes, on average, yes.

And then the growth itself, like zero, the growth of growth, yes.

So it's like...

Yeah,

That's what I mean, like, that's not the MRR itself yet.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah, yeah.

Right?

Getting faster and faster.

~ but that doesn't usually happen.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

But that's...

there's a lot of startups that that I mean, not a whole lot, but you there's dozens of s
of of startups of this general size that have shared their numbers.

And you've probably seen them.

what what generally happens is it looks like a line, and then sometimes there's a bend in
the line, like something structurally has changed and the line bends, but then it's still

a line again.

Now, you see something more like acceleration is

huge runaway successes, you know, Facebook or whatever, where like, all right, it's
accelerating.

Sure, but like you don't necessarily expect to do that.

It's interesting what you're saying right now.

It's like I have inflated expectations in a sense.

That's what you say.

you say that usually that doesn't happen.

So, but why?

Okay, okay.

Well, okay, there's why, but like before we get to why, like you're saying it's important
that growth accelerate and yet your growth is fine and normal, but you're you're just not

happy with that unless it accelerates or did you just not know that?

Yes, it was like if we take this initial goal of that that maybe like ~ That maybe I don't
believe fully yes about 100 K that I was working backwards from it yes like if I if I want

to reach this number

you just won't get there fast enough.

Yeah, yeah, I understand what you're saying.

Okay.

So here's here's just some data.

So this is an article of mine.

So that's very self serving to do that, but whatever.

~ because this is some of the data.

So here's here's Pally's for your MRR.

So it's flat.

And then it's then it's something, but look at that something.

It's like a line.

In fact, it looks like yours, Like close enough.

Up, up, up, up, up.

a little flat period, up, up, up.

Right?

That's kind of like you.

~ by the way, this is a million in MRR.

That's what that is.

And then here's ~ convert kit.

And I mean, yes, they they had this big growth swing, but look for for a long, long time,
~ years, it's this linear thing.

And then even when it bends, it's a new line.

See, it's still a line that's okay, so that's a very fast growing line.

fantastic, but it's not, it did accelerate at this one point.

But then it would turn into a line again, just at a much faster pace.

That would get you to 100K in MRR, a faster pace of growth, but not necessarily constantly
accelerating.

Here's another one.

This is convert kit later on just to see it.

Look at that.

Look how look how straight a line.

This is this is like 10 years.

Right?

That I mean that's that's very, very straight line, except for a change, which I think is
what you're saying is you want this change, this bend in the curve, right?

Okay, so

So let me, so that's enough of that.

I just wanted to show you what what I meant.

~ so yeah, so so I could I so I look at your graph and you're you don't have the bend is
the issue.

If we showed a longer picture of this, ~ it's what you said, like you're saying, look, I'm
adding net a thousand dollars of MRR per month.

So I'm just seeing like, all right, so in a year it's 12.

And and so if I just stack 12s on top of each other, that's too many years.

And also that's not what's gonna happen over that time frame.

~ and also your cancellation rate sets a cap, which I think you know already because you
have a thing here.

New MR is colliding with churn.

You want to explain that?

Yes, yes, it's...

It's the moment when approximately, number of...

Revenue, churning revenue growth, like...

will, annihilate each other, like, in a sense that, they will be, like, if I keep growing
with the same rate and my charm keeps up, like, at some amount it will be like zero, it

will be, like, I cannot add some MRR.

So this is approximately at 40k, this number.

So even if I continue to grow, I will, anyway, I cannot go to 100k.

Yeah, yeah.

So so this is a way for for other people who are listening to understand this if marketing
is

adding one K of MR per month in new revenue, but cancellation is, nine percent, let's say.

as the company gets bigger and bigger, nine percent is nine percent of a bigger and bigger
number.

But marketing is still putting in

1K, 1K, 1K each month.

But the churn is going up every month because the company's growing and 9% of a bigger
number is a bigger number.

So effectively the dollars of churn go up every month because of this 9%.

But marketing is not going up every month.

It's just staying at 1K.

So at some point, you're at a size where ~ the number of cust number of customers or
revenue, either one, that walks out the door in churn.

Is equal to the amount that ~ that new revenue that that that marketing is bringing in.

And at that point the company is literally not growing.

~ and you're saying that's at 40k MRR, which makes sense to me.

And a simple formula to derive this, by the way, which you probably know because you made
this this this chart is you take your MRR and you divide it by, or sorry, you take your

new MRR every month and you divide it by your cancellation rate.

So if you have one.

one K MRR and you divide it by the cancellation rate of of nine percent.

~ that's actually much worse.

So so I'm guessing one percent is probably net of cancels.

Or I'm sorry, that one one thousand dollars is net of cancels.

I'm guessing more than that comes in and that net of cancels it's one.

yeah, here it is.

June, ~ it's 3K.

That's right.

So 3K of MRR comes in, but at 9%, so div divided by 9%, and you get about 30, 40k in MRR,
which is about where you are.

And that's why this chart was flat, because you brought in 3K, but 3K left.

And you're saying, yeah, even in other months, this is still the case.

And so I I can't ever get past this.

Because of that nine percent cancellation, which that's the first thing my eyes went to is
this revenue is so high there's no way you can grow past a a very small limit.

So you've seen the same thing.

So the obvious question is, why is your cancellation rate so high?

Yes.

It's a good one.

It's a good one.

~ It might be a few reasons.

What?

Yes.

Like, yes, I don't know for sure.

I don't know.

Yes.

But why ~ I don't know for sure?

No, no, they have answers.

But I assume...

But like...

But let's say I trust this like 99 % like I have like people leave answers and actually I
shared them also but ~

But there is two layers to that.

For example, ~ I can say that the reason of charm because people having, they say that
they have short-lived use case.

They just use product for some feature of theirs.

I don't know, uploaded some file and then just canceled.

And...

Or I can say that the reason, initially, that I was somehow attracting this type of
customers, yes.

So it's like, so it's a bit mixed, but because I have like, from what I see, I have the
most charm on the smallest plants, like on the cheapest plants.

And...

Like, so maybe it's not...

So maybe it's not...

Initially it was a good fit for this kind of product.

That's like what I think globally, maybe, yes?

But if I check for reasons, there are like many of them.

And the most popular one, written manually by many people...

And it's like they just needed product for a month for some feature, for some project,
something like that.

Yes.

So when you say temporary slash no longer needed, ~ those are not the same thing.

So in other words, there's a really big difference between a person who says, I know going
into this that I need it for two weeks, and a person who says, I've been using this for

two years, but now I don't need it anymore.

Presumably because some projects ended.

so do you have a sense of of how this splits?

Is it is it mostly temporary?

Or is it or is there a lot of people who use it for two years and then then don't need it
anymore?

The latter...

Yes, yes, I think it's mostly temporary for this one.

Because I know, like, I have many customers who are still using the product for more than
two years.

But many of these...

Yes, yes.

Intuitively, yes, I cannot back up with numbers, But it was a mistake.

how quickly do they leave t typically?

I think it would be something between 1 to 3 months, something like that.

It might be even just a month, you know, like just subscribe and use the product.

would be

really good to do is to segment your customers be in let's say the first hundred days and
everything else as two different segments, because what's happening is all this stuff, now

whether that's okay or not, or good or bad, even setting that aside for a minute, that's
most of the people that are going through the product.

Like just adding up the temporary and the free plan is enough and this kind of stuff, it's
it's like already 50%.

So, so ~

That's drowning out the other metrics, which are also important, which is when peop when
it's not temporary and they use it all the time and they've used it for a year.

In other words, when it seems like an ideal customer, that data and that those effects are
being drowned out by the people where again it's not necessarily a problem.

It's just that it's not this ideal, sustainable business and so

Not right now, obviously, but in future that would be good idea to completely segment
those customers so you can get information about when it's temporary, what is that about?

Is it certain kinds of use cases?

Do I get those customers in certain channels?

Am I saying the wrong thing?

Am I attracting the wrong thing?

Is it fine?

It's just they're just not long-term customers.

~ and I should have a ~ either a different sort of an offering, like maybe a different
price point.

There's like the the hundred day

plan or something where they pay a certain amount.

It's more like one time revenue because that's what they actually want.

Or maybe don't do that, but segment them anyway just so that you're not worried when they
cancel your like, I expected that.

You know?

And and but you would tune things like, well, how much can I spend on things like
marketing or even tech support on a person that w is definitely going to churn in the next

tender days.

Definitely.

And you go, ~ a little bit, but very little.

Right.

Because ~

This is not a lot of revenue and I have to think of it like one-time revenue because it
effectively is.

And so I have to the rest of my business metrics or business ~ decisions have to be
aligned with that.

But then there's these other kinds of customers where I do expect them to be with me for
years.

And so I can afford more spend to acquire them.

I can afford to work with them more and support.

Maybe there's integrations they want help with.

That's very technical.

but that's worth it because that means they're here for three years because they've built
you into some system that they have, some permanent system.

So it's worth it.

So you want to be able to segment them so that you can be you can react and behave and and
spend money separately.

And and that's hard.

Like ~ maybe you have to ask ahead of time, even if this is just in the product, what this
is for or what this is like, so that you can know ahead of time.

Because people just sign up.

How would you know?

Well, what you could ask them what it's for, what they're doing, this and that.

You also could have different pricing plans that would naturally self-select people.

So that the people who for whom they know it's temporary, it would be more attractive for
them to pick a certain pricing plan.

And then for people where it's ~ where where it's long term, there would be a different
pricing plan that'd be attractive to them.

And then they they somewhat self-sep segregate.

That would be good.

So there's different ways, again, not just jumping right to the conclusions, of course,
but there's different ways to.

To figure out what that segmentation is, because it may be that on the temporary, all you
can afford to do is stuff that that's incrementally free.

Not not free, but incrementally free, like social media and SEO, where ~ of course, it's
not free either in time or money, but ~ but getting one more pe person to see it is is

free.

~ as opposed to advertisement, where that probably doesn't work for the temporary
customer.

There's just no price.

That's that's not you know, ridiculous, where you can afford to buy customers that are
gonna, you know, spend a total of twenty bucks, right?

~ but you could afford to buy someone that's gonna spend thousands of bucks.

so do you have a sense right now of what those use cases or those things might be, or is
that just an an interesting homework problem for the rest of today and tomorrow?

Use cases for customers who would stay or for customers who are leaving.

For both.

~ Yes, yes, I have examples of this.

Well, w what's a category?

Like think about a c the customers who stay forever and are happy.

~ I'm sure there's not just one kind, but what's an example of why that is?

What have they done?

J generally speaking.

What have they done?

Like why are they using it forever?

Did they build it into, for example, what one answer could be sometimes the act of taking
a screenshot on the web gets built into a feature in a product that they sell their

customers.

So unless they rip that feature out, they're gonna be a customer forever.

And they certainly don't want to build all that infrastructure themselves.

That's a distraction.

They've got their own product to work on.

They don't want to do this.

This is hard.

But since it's a built-in feature, like they're just gonna stay forever unless they rip
the feature out, which typically features are not ripped out.

Therefore, they stay forever.

And so the the in that case, the the generalization would be people who build in
screenshots as part of the product that they themselves sell.

So that might be an example.

Is that an example?

And if and are there other examples of categories like that?

This one, like one of the most, stickiest ones are these that you described.

And also there is kind of category.

For example, I have a company

are screenshotting hundreds, of websites after deploying updates and then checking if
there are any changes and then reverting back their deployed.

It's kind of like the main feature, but it's very important for them and they don't want
to spend on this kind of task.

it's...

like secondary importance i don't know how to say it like yes yes

or or

~ or end to end testing, something something like that.

Okay.

~ it it do people build it into products like I said, or did I just make that up and that
that's not whatever happens?

No, no, it's not.

This one is not like a part of the product, I think.

It's like for, but for that...

another example of a of a category that actually does happen among the people who stay
forever?

stay forever.

For example, companies...

a few examples I think...

~ company that...

I'm just sending cold emails and in cold emails it's like one of their main features.

And in cold emails they have templates for, let's say, cold email with a screenshot in it
of the prospect website and think about it.

And it's like one of the main features, let's say, of such a customer.

Yeah, so it's like.

maybe one of the top 3 top 5 features of such a customer.

So

so someone's doing some kind of personalized automation campaign like hold emailing.

And part of how you get someone's attention is you put their screenshot of their website
in the email, ~ whether just to get their attention or because you're pointing something

out or something like that.

~ in the same way that there people say, although I disagree with this, but there's that
thing that where you're supposed to use the other person's name when you all the time.

Yes.

Yeah, that's good.

that on purpose and that means I don't trust you.

And so to me it has the opposite effect.

But okay.

This kind of like that.

If you if you show me ~ my own stuff, then it seems more personalized.

In any way, maybe I'll look at it and like it doesn't seem quite so cold of an email.

Okay.

So integration testing of of websites or web apps, who knows?

~ cold or well, things where you want to customize some kind of outbound like emails.

~ with their w with their website.

Okay.

Is there any other things ~ any other c categories among the people that stay forever?

Like forever, yes.

It's a dream.

But for example, in some SaaS products in onboarding sessions where they need to fetch
like company website and extract some colors from it and to personalize their SaaS for

their customer and to speed up onboarding.

Yes.

that sounds really cool, but I would be shocked if hundred if you had a hundred customers
doing that.

No, not a hundred.

Yes, it's like I think about use cases where like I know like customers who are still
using the product and it's like

Yeah, but how many people do that?

The onboarding sessions with the colors, how many people do that?

Yes, it's not a lot.

Yes, it's not a lot.

Yes, yes.

~ It feels for me it's like...

Yes, it's good question.

It's a good question.

I probably...

Yes, yes, yes.

that one's fine.

I I I I mean, so so I mean, of course, there's gonna be one off cases, which is awesome.

They just won't be patterns that you can easily ~ that they'll be easy to exploit.

These other ones feel a lot more exploitable to me.

This one sounds really fun, actually, really interesting, great idea.

I just it just doesn't feel like something that ~ that that's widespread.

That would be easy to scale or something.

Okay, so

but we should spend our time mostly on the successes and getting more of them.

Because we could talk about why people do things temporarily, but my guess is there's a
huge number of reasons why people do things temporarily.

Like, why do I need a screenshot for a few weeks and not again?

I mean, there's probably infinite reasons, even including just hobbyists doing weird stuff
with AI and stuff that you're just trying crap.

Like, there's probably all kinds of reasons.

And it and in a certain sense it doesn't matter because you don't want any of them as
customers.

Hmm.

Yes, yes.

they sign

up, but they're gonna sign up and leave.

And so for your for your goal of getting to 100K, right?

Or really even just a goal of not capping out at your current size, right?

Like the even setting the hundred K aside, just saying, I just don't want to stop growing
like I am.

Like just start stu you know, even without a goal of of where it should be.

~ these people that come in for two for two for two months and leave are not going to be
the solution.

No, no, can be once, like, yes, it can be some nice one-time revenue, you know, having
this, maybe even...

Yeah.

afford

you can't afford to spend time to get them because they don't give you any money.

Okay.

So ~ so so so that's why there's probably, you know, hundreds of use cases and it kind of
doesn't matter because that's not what you want to do.

It's okay when they show up and and they leave, especially if you've segmented your
metrics so that you're not getting confused ~ as to ~

What metrics and activities are important for you to focus on to get the actual goal,
which is people that stay a long time because that's where the growth is going to come

from.

That's how you're going to get your cancellation rate down, right?

Versus all these people.

So I'll just take the integration testing for the web.

~ for websites, how many software companies do integration testing of some kind with
either a website because it's marketing or

A website because it's some web app and they're doing some kind of integration testing.

Maybe it's in a continuous integration server, maybe it's manual, maybe it's a QA team,
but somebody's doing that.

How many software companies, let's just say, I mean, I don't want to be too America
centric, ~ but how many companies, let's say in America, do you think there are as a power

of 10 only who do integration tests right now with websites?

think this is a lot, but this one specific, like the moment you said about like numbers,
how many, like we talked about forever customers, yes, but how many of them I have.

Like this one specific use case, it's not even like any random companies that's doing
integration testing, but they're like more like a hosting provider, you know?

So it's like.

It's much less than any company that's doing integration testing.

It's a company that hosts hundreds of websites, thousands of websites, yes.

And then this number, this number is interesting.

Okay.

Well let's focus on that then.

This is bad news, of course.

But how many how many how many companies in the world do you think host at least a hundred
websites and thus might want something like this?

~ potentially.

They just potentially might want it.

That we don't know if they do, but just they're in the they're at least in the category
where they might want to use screenshots to make sure they haven't screwed anything up

during a deploy or whatever whatever the use case is for the integration testing.

Just as a power of ten, how many companies do you think there are that have more than a
hundred websites that they're hosting?

I feel there is no more than 1000 hosting providers in the world.

It feels like...

You think it's more?

You know for sure.

Probably yes.

But it feels for me...

I can probably tell 50 maybe.

It's like, you know, counting AWS and many other companies like...

Yes, yes, yes, but for this like...

And then it feels like...

I went to a bootstrapping conference called t ~ MicroConf that I'm sure you know.

And there were several several people at that conference alone who ~ had hosting companies
with more than a hundred websites in it.

Those are little bootstrappers going to a conference.

So yeah, there's AWS, but I mean

Yeah, because I'm not like if I take the top ones and then I go to the smallest companies,
it feels like...

because there's there's more than a thousand, but let's not assume there's just a hundred
thousand.

That sounds like a lot.

So let's call it ten thousand, right?

let's set them.

OK, OK.

Yeah, ~ getting one percent of them to do integration testing like this sounds hard.

But maybe plausible.

Does that sound fair?

Hmm...

You there's 10,000 of them?

No, forget that.

We already said there's 10,000.

We're just saying that.

Now, with however many there are, does it sound plausible that maybe we could get 1% of
them, however many there are, we could get 1% of them maybe to be convinced that they

should use some kind of screenshotting technology as part of the deploy, presumably to say
screenshot ~ let's say a hundred sample websites if you're co that you're hosting, run

your deploy, then screenshot them again and make sure nothing's changed.

Roughly speaking, because we all know that's not quite how websites work, but let's just
let's let's keep it simple just for discussion's sake.

That's a good idea.

We actually do that at WP Engine, by the way.

So it's a good idea.

what do you think maybe one percent of people who have this problem could be convinced
theoretically that that's a good idea for them to implement?

Yes, yes, I think I could use already I have customer stories related to this.

~

to say yes to that and actually implement it?

This is every every hosting company in the world with more than a hundred websites.

That's a very good question.

That's a very good question.

Yes, 10 %?

I would need to try at least to reach out to a few of them to see like you know like to
see how they respond like how they work and like like their like approval process how do

they integrate because yes

buy your

software, they have to build a whole integration system.

Yes, yes.

retrofit their existing one in a significant way.

This isn't like a quick afternoon, right?

So can we convince, can we reach out, talk to, and then convince 10% of the market,
however big the market is, ~ to do all that.

Yes, if I could solve already a lot of like integration issues around this, when you
integrate my product, yes, and assist them maybe and provide some like more features to to

make integration smoother.

Yes, No, no, the number itself, I don't know.

Well, that's all I'm asking.

Can you get to ten percent of the market,

you think?

~ I feel it's pretty painful problem for them.

Should be.

I'm ~ trying to see like how, like how, is it really possible to sell to them like by
ripping out like...

question whether it's possible to sell.

I'm assuming it is possible, but like can we convince

~ ten percent of the market to build an a integration testing system or retrofit their
existing one around screenshots?

Yes, yes, yes.

I I would I would be shocked if you could get ten percent of the market.

No,

it's not.

You said could we convince to do them this?

Yes.

Yeah, I would be shocked if you

could convince them 10% of the market to implement all this because it's a lot of work and
and ~ but maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe maybe the after all WP Engine did it, so we had the pain.

So maybe I'm wrong.

And and like they in at a certain scale, you just have to, and this is an easier way.

So I hear that.

So I would guess it's one percent, but let's but it's 10%.

Let's say it's 10%.

It's not a hundred percent.

We can all we can definitely agree on that.

So it's ten percent.

Okay, so so there's ten thousand, there's ten thousand customers.

or potential customers and maybe you could get to a thousand of them and then each of them
pay what?

what are customers paying for this per month

Let's say like power of 10.

Do they pay a hundred dollars a month, ten dollars a month, a thousand dollars a month?

It's between 100 and 1000.

Okay.

And so three hundred?

For example, yes,

Okay.

So if a thousand customers were paying a hundred dollars a month, ~ that's your hundred K
MRR.

Yes, yes.

So we just figured out a path to a hundred K MRR is that you have a thousand small hosting
companies.

Obviously, if you can get a big one that's paying you more, that's good.

Right.

We're not we're not we're not saying don't do that, right?

That's not what we're saying.

It's just that like you can't depend on that as easily.

But if you could get a thousand small hosting companies to implement this, you would reach
your goal of a hundred K MRR on that basis alone.

Yes.

Now, again, I think ten percent is too high.

but still what we've done by doing this is we've established that this is a path that's
plausible.

Plausible doesn't mean likely or unlikely.

It just means it's possible, given what we said, it is it is at least possible.

Most of the ideas that you or I would have for how to grow a screenshot API company, most
of them

Will not even plausibly work.

In fact, I think this one probably does not plausibly work because I don't believe in the
10% number, right?

I just wanted to go with you to explore this area, but it feels like...

I think it's it's probably more like 1%, in which case it's another 10K a month, which is
still ~ not trivial, but pretty far away from the kind of change you want.

And so while it could be good to have so what that would tell me, i i if you believe those
numbers, ~ then what that that downgrades it from ~ the complete strategy of the company,

that which it would be if you think it can achieve the goal by itself, it downgrades that
t idea to

This is a decent idea, but only if I apply a certain amount of time and money.

So if this is a certain marketing campaign, maybe even a s outbound sales campaign,
specifically to those kind of companies.

And I can't afford I cannot afford to make 10 new features and lots of custom work for
them, but I can do a little bit to gain that to gain that 10k of MRR.

~

That's the amount of effort I'm willing to put into this.

And I still have not solved my root problem, but maybe I've pushed it down the road a
little.

That would, that's how I would think about that, if those are the numbers.

So the the point, of course, is we've we're obviously not gonna automatically find all the
right answers on the call today.

~ that would be very lucky if we did.

But this kind of mindset is how you can have an idea of like, okay, who are my good
customers that I'm already able to serve?

That's what we first did.

We said this web integration.

We said the cold email ~ content and stuff like that.

And then what is the possible, even possible market for this that I could get?

And then if I do those numbers, is it even in the ballpark of the result that I want?

If it's not even within a power of 10 of the ball of what I want, then even if that it's
just too it's not the answer.

Right.

The numbers are just too small.

Now, obviously we made up all those numbers and they're not exactly right, of course.

But if that's but if it's off by a whole power of ten, it's just wrong.

It's just not the not the likely way forward.

So ~ let's try it again with the custom emails just to just to run it run it again.

So of course it doesn't have to be emails, but that does seem like the that does seem like
the most common thing 'cause if I'm calling on the phone, I don't know what I need a

screenshot for exactly.

So this case of

I'm doing outbound emails and I want to include a screenshot for whatever reason to get
their attention or it's relevant, whatever.

How many companies for how many companies does it make sense for them to include a
screenshot?

Maybe they don't do it today, of course, but that it would make sense for them to do that.

What ~ how many companies do you think do that?

Obviously, millions of companies send emails.

So that's a very, very big number.

But how many of them want to include a screenshot, do you think?

It's a good one, because I have like two different types of customers doing that.

But if we talk about forever customers, like customers who perpetually like...

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

whether that means ads, whether that means support, whether that means adding features.

You can't afford in that sense to ~ to do stuff for customers that don't stay.

So they're f they're fine.

We're happy if they come and they give us some money and they leave as long as we didn't
spend money on them and as long as their metrics don't poison the metrics of our ideal

real customers, then we're okay with it.

but we're not focused on them.

Can't be.

That's not how you're gonna get to where you wanna be.

Of course, because their cancellation rate is atrocious, and that means you're never gonna
build the the kind of business you want off of that.

So the customers who do the emails, ~ how many really wanna do that?

Forever.

I also want to answer something like 1,000.

But I don't have many of these two, you know?

Like it's like if you go category by category, use case by use case, I'm not sure I like
one, I need to check this.

need to, for sure I need to work.

Yeah.

j

because you wouldn't need data to know if it was one jumped out at you, right?

Okay, so let's we don't have to go through that.

I a a thousand is so low that that tells me you don't think people do this really.

~ because that's because that's like point one percent of all companies who send emails
want to do it this way, which is you're probably right.

In other words, people just don't want to do this.

And you can find every once in a while you can find a a strange company that

does it.

But like this is not this is not something to build a business around, is what I'm hearing
from you.

Yes, it's like, for example, you want to email potential prospects about like how you want
to improve their design of the website.

it.

But you're but what when you say a thousand companies

in the whole world would want to do it, you're telling me either, ~ this is this is so
rare, it's ~ you know, that that just it's just silly to even talk about it, or you're

just so not confident that this is something people that that that people would want even
if you tried to sell it to them.

Yes, I feel that there is not so many companies that really do it.

But those who are doing this, they are forever customers.

So the so once

we start with a number like a thousand, that's the entire market.

And again, you might be wrong, but the point is if that's your conviction, it's there you
go, like close enough.

~ then it doesn't really matter what the other numbers are.

How many can you convert at what price?

It doesn't matter because it's just not enough.

Like your whole company's a thousand customers now.

So like that just isn't gonna do it.

So ~ so all right, so let's take a step back and say, all right.

There isn't a use case that's a healthy use case in a clear market that you can go target.

There's just a bunch of scattered stuff people sometimes do with screenshots.

There isn't really a pattern that leads to a market big enough to get to your goal.

Is that possible?

This is one of the scariest questions, but still need to ask yes.

It might be the real question.

~

I think it's the problem.

I think the crux of the problem is ~ there isn't a big pull for getting screenshots via
API.

That's just not something that's very important to a really clear area of the market who
needs to do that forever.

That doesn't mean nobody wants it.

People want it.

You you listed use cases where people want it, sometimes temporarily, sometimes
permanently.

It does exist.

It's not like there's never a pro never a problem to solve.

That's not the case.

It's just there isn't a clear market where here's a use case where literally a million
people do it.

And so if you and you can definitely get a nice chunk of them, it's valuable to them, so
they'll pay more.

They'll do it forever.

I know the of course forever is a big word.

I'm just, you know, I'm I'm trying to be brief about, you know, about it.

if until further notice, they'll do it because it's integrated with something important to
them.

~ and it's just it's just hard to see what that what that is, and you're not seeing a
pattern with your current customer base that would identify that.

So, how old is the company?

Four years.

So, in four years, and many, many thousands of customers, because there's a thousand now,
but they've come and gone as well.

In four

years of experience doing nothing but this and seeing thousands and thousands of customers
come through, you have yet to find an example of a use case where there is a decent number

of customers in the world for that use case who want this ~ and want it for more than a
few months.

Is that true?

Yes, it's pretty close, yes.

You know, every time I try something new and I have this big hope, you know, like, maybe
there is new, like, for example, AI agents now.

Every agent needs screenshots, Yes, yes, but, but, but, but if you look at the...

Yes, yes, yes.

you have yet to find it, right?

Okay.

So this to me is the cr but before we get to the solutions in AI, maybe AI changes stuff.

Maybe it does.

But before we get to whether AI is changing it, right now, you have not found a way, or
you have not found a market that cares enough to sustain this company in the way that you

want to, which is to triple it.

What you have done is built a company where

Probably you could continue running it just as you are now.

And let's see, let's go up to these things.

I'm guessing you could run a company where ~ this and this.

~ in other words, I bet you could run a company that makes let's just call it twenty five
K per month in profit.

Maybe thirty K per month in profit for years to come.

Because you could just do what you're doing now.

There would be a lot of temporary people coming in and out, but that's okay.

If sometimes people will stick because they have a weird ass use case that almost no one
has, but they do, so they stick.

Hooray.

And so you stay at this, let's say, three 30 to 40k a month top line, 25 to 30k a month
bottom line.

You stay there because people still need screenshots.

It's just scattered like it is now.

And

You just continue.

And of course, incrementally you'll improve it.

Incrementally, you might save some money, some costs, and make make profit go up.

Incrementally, you might make a feature that makes more people stickier.

~ you might find like some of these use cases we identified.

You could do some campaigns specifically for them and maybe pick up another 10, 20, even
100 customers in that use case.

So again, that's not tripling the company, but you could probably pick up some other good
customers intentionally.

getting closer to that 40, maybe even 45, 50, pushing up a little by having better higher
quality customers, at least of some of them.

I I totally believe that.

This is a path.

So let's call this option A.

Option A is you look at this the crux of the problem, which again I think is ~ there isn't
a good market for this.

There's not a market, meaning customers who have a like a sort of consistent sort of
problem that they want to solve in this way.

There's enough of them.

They want to pay enough

All this kind of stuff I listed before.

That's what I mean by a good market.

There isn't a good market for this tool.

Again, this is just a this is a crux of the puzzle.

This might, I might be wrong.

And like you're about to say, AI may change it.

I know.

We'll we'll get to that in a second.

But first, let's really agree on what is the crux of the current issue.

So I'm proposing that the crux is this thing of there isn't a good market.

We have not in four years and thousands of customers, it is not ~

a a mar a good market is not materialized, which tells us either it doesn't exist or it's
so hard to find, we can't find it.

Option A is yeah, that's right, there isn't one.

Continue to run the company, like I said, incrementally improving, being a little bit
smarter, maybe targeting a couple of use cases to get to just change the customer mix a

little, ~ to to bump it up a little.

And in this way, incrementally improve the the company.

That's option A, incremental improvement.

But actually let me let me pause there.

Do you agree that that's the crux?

No good market has materialized.

or do you not agree that that's the crux of the of the problem?

I feel that it might be true, intuitively, because if I found some use case...

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, like it feels for me like no because I would have
one use case dominating I would see it and I would it would be easier for me to double

down and yes yes

it's a crux because because if it were obvious and easy, you'd be doing it already, like
you just said.

The fact is it's not there.

And so you're sitting there going, It's not there.

I don't I'm stuck.

I'm stuck.

Because it's you clearly just doing the same thing as you're doing now will not achieve a
hundred K in revenue in in in MRR.

And ~ and it's not obvious what to do.

Like that's that is the crux.

I don't know what to do because there's no good markets that I found yet.

So option A is incrementally running the company.

Another op another possibility is there is a good market out there for this, but you
haven't found it yet, which means to find it, you will need to go do something

intentionally that you are not currently doing.

You can't just sit back and look at your customer base and say, Where's the good market?

You have to go seek it or even create it.

This is another possibility.

So it could be let's let's let's talk about the integration testing again.

I could make the case,

Anyone with a website in marketing should be doing this.

They have a marketing website.

Marketers change websites all the time.

They run A B tests, they change headlines, they add a new landing page, they do something
weird with the home page, they screw with the pricing page, and even more subtle things.

And they don't want anything else to break as a result of them doing the one thing.

So they should have some sort of what engineers would call integration tests.

They would not call it that because they're marketers.

And you're saying you could say there's 10 million marketing departments in the world.

They all ought to do integration testing.

They don't.

~ I'm not saying I can take 10% of the market, anything nutty like that, but I think I
could be the champion of marketers actually doing ~ regression testing.

I'm gonna bring regression testing to the world of marketing.

We know we understand it in in software why to do it.

Marketers should do it, but they don't know that yet.

So I'm going to educate them.

And I will be the one.

Prometheus bringing the fire of of regression testing to the world of marketing.

~ in doing so, and so I'll have a product for that.

It'll involve screenshots.

And ~ in doing that, ~ I'll I I'll literally create a new little category in marketing
that'll just be me until other people realize it's a good idea, but that's okay.

~

And why screenshots?

Because maybe I should be looking at the content of the page.

~ the thing is, you can look at the HTML, you can look at the CSS, you can look at
JavaScript, you can have AI do it.

And at the end of the day, you don't actually don't know what it looks like.

Stuff happens.

A lot of that code, by the way, is dynamic and does weird real-time stuff.

So you really you can't look at the source code.

You gotta look at the website.

In fact, with the tool really I'm making this up now because it's just an example, right?

In fact

What you need to do is show a before and after screenshot and show that to the marketer
and maybe show them 10 pages of that, 10 pages that they've configured as being important.

And the human being is going to look at them.

Because sometimes web pages are different simply because they're dynamic.

So just asking, is the page different is actually also not sufficient.

Cause let's say ~ an image rotates on the home page or there's a video.

So the exact

the exact frame the video's on depends on when you take the screenshot or javascript is
pulling something live.

And so there's all these reasons why the screen the it's not identical and that's okay.

And a human being would know that if they saw the before after they would see the
differences, ~ maybe even highlight them for the human.

and the human could tell whether that's okay or not.

And so it really it does take that human still.

Maybe it's AI in the future.

I don't care.

So I'm gonna build a product that does all that and bring it to marketing.

Now, is that a good idea?

Do marketers care?

Could you convince them of that?

Could you make a good product that that marketers could use, given that you're an API
company today?

These are all questions I don't know the answers to.

Maybe the whole idea is stupid.

But what I'm saying, but but the point is that this is an option B.

Option B is rather than I mean, obviously run the company you have now because it's paying
the bills and everything.

So I mean, don't just stop.

But option B is in order to achieve my goal.

I have to build a different product, but I need to take my expertise and technology that I
have into that because that's whatever that is is gonna be part of my strategic advantage,

is my experience, knowledge, tech, et cetera.

I obviously have to leverage that.

What is a market that I could that exists or that I I think I actually could make, create
that ~ that would

That would leverage that into a into a product that doesn't exist, or or even if it exists
a little bit that you know that you could make a good one of.

So maybe that marketing idea is good, maybe it's bad.

I don't know.

~ but this is option B is find another market that's actually good.

~ now the how does that strike you?

Like when I say all that stuff, emotionally is your reaction, hell yeah.

Like APIs are, you know, that's what I know, but god damn it, it's dead.

Like that sounds so fun.

Or is your reaction something more like, yeah, you know, I get it.

And if I were outgoing and I liked talking to people and I liked being a ~ and I liked
being a ~ an evangelist for a new idea, I could see that I guess, but like I just want to

be in the background doing APIs under the hood, talking to engineers, just going on
Twitter and yapping with other indie developers rather than selling to marketers.

I don't I don't even trust marketers.

I wouldn't like selling to marketers.

~ now obviously these two emotional states of I'm super excited or that sounds like death
are not the only two emotional choices.

But emotionally when you hear option B the way I said it, how does that strike you?

It's interesting because I have this problem that I have many founder friends and
sometimes I want to tell them about my product and they think maybe they could use it,

yes, but you it's very niche, it's very rare and it doesn't...

the question.

How does option B strike you emotionally?

Yeah.

Do you are you like, yeah, hell yeah.

Something like that.

Maybe it's marketing, maybe it's not, but yeah.

Yeah.

Or are you saying or are you more like, I don't like that?

Like just emotionally, not rationally.

Not what happens when you talk to some random founder who's not a customer.

It's interesting, I would check it.

It's not hell yeah, it's not sounds like worm, but it's interesting, I would love to check
it, know, like to...

So you're you're not sure.

That's fine.

That that's good.

That's that's

a good answer, I think.

like it's it's it's it's more useful when you already know that you do or don't want to do
it because it eliminates or ~ highlights the option.

So it's it's great when ~ it's exciting or or or rejected.

But ~ obviously it's valid and common to go, hmm, I'm gonna have to learn more before I
know if I'm excited or not.

Like that's that's very valid.

I could do it, but I'm not sure.

It's not like...

by the way, because you could do anything.

You could you could learn how to play you could learn how to play the clarinet, but you're
not excited to do that, right?

~ so so ~ but that's okay.

you might get excited.

It's totally true that sometimes we're like, I don't know.

And then you try it and you're like, actually, this is cool.

Like that that happens all the time in life, right?

So if the door's not closed, then what that means is it's a default no, right?

Status quo is no.

But if you're like, ~ but I'm curious.

Good.

Then you go explore that because you you absolutely could change your mind ~ with
exposure.

So that's that's good.

What about let me go back to option A real quick, which is incrementally run the current
business or run the current business incrementally improving it ~ along these edges to

make it better and be happy with the let's let's call it 30k a month profit with a well,
very well run solo entrepreneur business.

~ how does that strike you emotionally?

Are you like, yeah, that's who I am, that's fulfilling?

Or ~ are you like?

No, didn't you hear me when I said I wanted to triple the company?

Like that's not good enough.

Like it maybe it should be, but it isn't.

Like, like how does it how's option A strike you?

I will answer honestly.

I'm tired.

Let's say...

Not super excited.

Yeah, of course.

That's I that's what you said at the top.

So I'm not I'm not shocked.

It's still we like the point of these options, of course, is we're trying to list w
everything on the menu.

You're gonna end up picking something on the menu.

Maybe you need to try it first before you know which which which one you want to order.

But of course, of course, you want as a big of a menu selection as possible.

First, because you know, the more choices, the the more likely the right choice is there.

And also because sometimes they intersect or collide somehow, or there's some there's some
better idea that wasn't on the menu.

But just going through the things in the menu, thinking them through, and why do I like it
or not, or what's the good or bad, just that can trigger some even better idea.

So it's always a good idea to put lots of options on the menu, even if you hate them.

~ they're useful in getting to an answer that you don't hate.

So okay, the option A, you hate.

~ now.

No, but let's let's just yes, like like it is.

It's unfulfilling

and you would it you do hate.

l I mean it's funny for me to tell you what you hate.

But let me explain what I mean though.

You would be unhappy if for five years that's what you did.

~ it's pretty good.

Yes, it feels like that.

Yes, yes.

like you

wasted five years of your life.

In fact, maybe five of your best years.

It's a good framing, yes.

~ 34.

Right.

So these are your best years because you're old enough to have experiences and some
wisdom.

And ~ but you're not old you're not so old that ~ you can't think properly anymore.

You can't your attention spans ~ lower, you need more sleep than before, your body's
starting to break down.

Right.

Like you have a lot of wisdom, but man, you just can't, you know, this and that.

Now I I'm not a fatalist.

Of course there's lots of things you can do to make it better or worse, but like also as
as

As Seinfeld says, father time is undefeated.

Right.

So it's not good.

Not good news.

So you're you are in a what you might say 30s are probably some kind of a optimum.

And so you don't want to spend your optim the next optimum five years ~ incrementally
running this business.

What whether other people would agree or not or what they think about you, that's how you
feel.

Yes, yes.

It feels like...

would hate it, because you would you even even after the fact you'd look back on that
saying, I I could have done anything else with those five years, even something that would

fail, at least I would have been doing something instead of puttering around for five
years in in this mode.

So okay, so option A, not exciting.

Now, what what is interesting about that though, if I'm gonna digress a little into option
A, is it is the easiest and clearest path forward.

Is run the current business and make it a little better.

Like clearly, that's the easiest and clearest thing to do, right?

~ but you don't want to.

So when what's interesting is either you'll pick something else to do with this business,
like an option B, or let's come let's think of more options too.

~ but you might decide, I don't like any of these options.

But what's nice about option A in general, like, is it's very clear how to do it.

And so if I were to sell this business.

Or otherwise, or maybe I don't sell it completely.

I get a new partner and I but but I I peel off, or there's different ways of divesting
yourself of the business, but still having some financial benefit, right?

this is a business that someone else could run.

It's one person could run it because one person is running it.

Now that's a little unfair because often one person that when the founder can run it, that
doesn't mean that and just some random person can also run it.

Of course, that's not what it means.

But someone else who's also founder material, let's just say, could run it.

Cause you've built a business that makes ~ a quarter million dollars a year in profit that
one person can do.

One very talented, devoted, ~ you know, experienced person, yes, but still, that's
freaking amazing.

And there's many, many, many people on Twitter who wish they were in that scenario.

Good.

Maybe they should be.

Maybe they should run this business.

And there's lots of ways to do it.

Maybe you continue to get a salary essentially off of it and and it's funded that way.

Maybe someone does buy it because that does happen, of course.

~ or maybe it's some combination where they give you some money now and some over time as
the business supports it.

~ and that way you can get enough money in total, but not all at once because that person
can't afford it.

There's lots and lots of ways that could go, but let's not try to solve that right now.

Let's just say there's ways.

Because you've built a business where, okay, it's not obvious how to get it to a hundred
K.

Maybe it's even impossible.

It's maybe.

But it sure as hell can go from 30 to 40.

And I would say from from from from 40 to 50, like like you said, not with the current
customer base, but there's enough use cases, enough ideas you could get some other better

customers, not completely transforming the whole business, but just incrementally and get
it to maybe 50k and and 30k in in revenue and 30k a a month in profit.

I believe that entirely.

~

So that's that's that's an ideal business for many, many people.

So that's one of the great things about option A is there's other people who would love
that.

That's good because that that gives you a way out if in fact leaving the business is what
you end up wanting to do.

~ so I suppose we could call that option C.

Option C is sell the company or otherwise leave the company but don't ~ leave the company
and get some sort of ~ payment for that.

Like I just listed different ways you could get payment for it.

So we won't we won't try to stipulate what that is.

But option C is you're like, you know what, I just don't want to do screenshots anymore.

I've done it for four years.

I'm tired of it.

But this is a good little business.

So I want out, but I want to get paid somehow.

That's somehow that's that works and is fair.

But I want to move on.

I don't know what move on to what.

But I'm just done with screenshots.

I just don't want to do screenshots anymore.

Like even if I could do that stuff with the markers, I just don't want to do screenshots
anymore.

So how does that strike you when I say that, when I say, I just don't want to do
screenshots anymore?

Do you think, yes, exactly, that's exactly how I feel?

Or are you like, no, I don't hate screenshots.

I just I just need a product that's working better.

~ This one is interesting because even if we talk about option A Yes, this one is the most
exciting in a sense It's interesting Yes, kind I feel like I can kind of know like

Transform myself to like it for more time, you know, but it feels like if we talk long
term like you said about five years

Let's say if I still run this and I still do option A for five years, okay, it's cool,
it's nice, small business as you said, but it feels there's so much more to do.

Yes.

Yes, see.

No, but thy question was emotionally

when I said, I just don't want to do screenshots anymore Are you like, Right, that's how I
feel.

I just don't wanna look at it I just don't wanna think about a screenshot ever again.

No, no, no.

It feels...

I can do it.

Yes, I can do it.

I know you can do it.

You can do anything.

You can learn to play the clarinet.

Poorly, pro probably.

So please

don't do that.

~ when I say I don't when I say, God damn it, I never want to see another screenshot
again, are you like, hell exactly right?

Or do you say, No, screenshots are fine.

I just I just need a but but this this product, meaning the market and the customers
selling, this product isn't working and that I can't abide.

But ~ those screenshots are fine.

It's just I just I need a market that's working.

Yeah, so it's fine.

This one resonates more with me.

It's fine.

It's okay.

just...

Probably, yes, like...

Here's here's

why here's why that's important because ~ I hear I did hear you that option C, sell the
business and just do something else, is most exciting.

Gotcha.

But here's here's why this emotional thing is important.

If you were to say, I'm just done with screenshots, then that means option B is also off
the table.

But if you say, I'm done with this product, but the technology and my expertise, that's
fine.

Then option B is still on the table.

Because option B is, of course, not really selling screenshots.

It's selling regression testing to marketers or whatever, some other idea.

Screenshots just happen to be ~ how you deliver that value.

And so

If you hate screenshots themselves and you ever want to do screenshots again, then you
don't want a product that's still doing that, right?

But if you're like, no, no, no, that's fine.

I just don't want to sell the product of API screenshots.

I want to sell a different product.

But screenshots, that's fine.

I would say, good.

Then then option B is still on the table because you just said there's so much else to do.

Right.

If there could be something else to do that's unrelated, that's fine.

That's option C.

Option C is get rid of it so you can go do the unrelated thing without being distracted by
this company, right?

But it could be that the totally something else is still something where your current
expertise and technology helps you get an edge.

So like it could be that the next thing you do is play the clarinet, but then all of your
current experience doesn't give you an edge.

So you're just like everyone else who's learning to play the clarinet, except you started
late.

It's actually kind of bad.

Right?

~ whereas if you do something that leverages what you currently do, you're ahead of the
competition.

Yes.

leveraging

some the asset that you have, which is your experience and your tech and all this stuff.

So if you don't hate screenshots per se, then it's then option B still possible, possible,
because that could be that next totally different product that just happens to ~ leverage

the stuff that you you are an expert in, and thus you can build that product quicker and
better than a competitor who also had the same idea or wants to copy you.

Right?

Because, like, let's say you did the marketing thing.

And now it's January of 2027.

And now the marketing thing is out there.

And then someone else goes, man, that's a good idea.

That's easy to do with Claude.

And then they build it in Claude.

~ they're wrong because as you know, screenshots are actually really hard to do.

And get rid of all the bugs and all stuff is actually quite hard.

And so they don't know that.

So while they're struggling for the next year or two to get the bugs out, you're adding
the next feature and the next feature, and it's just way ahead.

You see what I mean?

But why?

Because you've already, because you're leveraging this asset and experience that you have,
which is this knowledge and tech around screenshots.

You're leveraging that so that keeps you ahead, at least a for a bit.

Like, okay, it's not, you know, you haven't like invented Uber or anything, but but this
is good.

This is a good kind of ~ strategic advantage.

It's pr it's good.

So this is what I mean.

If you don't hate screenshots, option B becomes possible because that is a different
product, but leveraging something you have.

They're vo thereby making a great strategy for you, as opposed to option C, which is I
gotta get out of that.

I can't look at screenshots anymore.

It's the end.

I just can't.

~ I'm burned out on screenshots.

Okay, then you need a clean break.

That that's that.

So I what I'm hearing you say is option C is the most interesting thing because there's so
much more new stuff.

But option B is not impossible because maybe that new thing that I want to do, maybe if it
could leverage what I already have.

To give me an advantage, okay.

Like, yeah, I guess that would actually be even better.

Yes, yes, yes,

Okay.

All right.

So we've we've established

if a plausible option B exists.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well I mean,

well the bottom line is you said I want to do you said option C is exciting because
there's so much more to do, which I I took to mean there's so many other product ideas,

company ideas that you could be doing that you would have a lot more excitement for.

Is that right?

Yes, yes.

It feels like also like when we talked after the whole conversation for me it's obvious
now that option A it would be like we wouldn't have this talk probably you know there's

like option A just continue to do whatever I'm doing it's like

Well, option A is not to continue doing whatever you're doing.

It is to incrementally improve the business.

So like you weren't thinking about or you weren't you right now you don't have an outbound
campaign where you've identified people who send emails with screenshots and you've and

you've identified a group of ~ a thousand of them and you're targeting them with a
marketing campaign to try to get more of them.

You're not doing that right now.

So I'm saying you could.

So option A is yes, run the business.

But increment but but get much more targeted and tactical about how you're incrementally
improving it so that you do bust beyond this 30 to 40k of revenue ~ ceiling.

And I can stop sharing this, I guess.

~ you do you do bust beyond that ceiling.

You're not gonna get to the 100k, probably, but you get past this little the this little
lump because you're being smarter about identifying these valuable use cases, targeting

them better with marketing.

~ segmenting out the customers that are temporary.

You're happy to have them because they represent a lot of revenue and profit every month.

So no problem.

But you get much smarter about who you're targeting, where you're spending your time and
money on and support and features so that you do evolve the company in a way that gets

past this ~ this this this current ~ plateau.

So option A is not running the companies now it's everything I just said being a lot smart
smarter about incrementally running the company.

However, I agree it probably doesn't get you to 100k because ~ because the the markets
just aren't there.

Right?

They're not there's not that many good markets, or there's not any good markets, there's
just little pockets of things.

But you could still be smarter about it.

That's option A.

But I still hear you that you don't want to do it.

No problem.

I just want to be really clear that option A is not just just running the business as now.

It's more than that.

It's just I hear you that you you say, yes, but I don't want to do that, right?

Yes, kind of, yes, yes, yes.

next person, if you were to do option C and sell it, you would expect the next person to
do option A, not run the business as it is now, but do option A.

Run the business, but better.

Yes, interesting.

So okay, option A is that, option B, so I guess we won't do this now, but when you think
it when you say there's something new I could do in the future, ~ what ~ what I would do

as you ex as you as you think about what that could be, if there's a way for screenshots
to be a part of it, even a small part, like the marketing thing, that will give you an an

advantage, and so that would make it a better product for you.

So it's not a requirement that you do that, of course.

It's not of course it's not, but it would be better because you would be the the more
you're lever the more you leverage experience and and even technology that you have, the

more that strategy is correct for you.

And the more it's something you've never, you know, none of it is something you're you're
you're even you're talented at or good at.

Well, it's not clear why you are even doing that.

So right.

So it of course that's not a hard and fast rule.

I'm just saying that would be better.

Yes.

Yes.

So you were so before we were talking, you were about to talk about AI and how that
changes everything.

So I'm guessing you're gonna tell me because of AI agents, AI needs screenshots.

Therefore, if you were an MCP server for AI getting screenshots, that would be potentially
amazing because then AI could use it a lot, even even ~ more than people know, the users

of them know, and and that could be a whole nother way to have the current API product.

g breathe new life because it's a brand new ~ use case.

Is that what you were gonna say?

Or tell me, if not, what what is the AI case you were gonna make about how that's gonna
change everything?

That's how I thought, let's say maybe six months ago that it could change.

But then I had customers who were using screenshots within Codex, Clot Code and with
agents and then I realized, okay, they also, there's like...

It's just a tool, know, like they're using this through a tool and there is like no one
use case.

It's not like this AI agents, it's not a use case actually.

Also after we talk about all this, like I see.

The same example, marketers are using codecs and then use screenshots for some analysis of
some websites for a short period of time and then they churn.

It's not like...

It's kinda changing.

I see many new customer profiles like product managers, marketers, designers.

But it's not like...

They also churn a lot.

And it's not like some repeatable, scalable...

I could say this is like agents, like AI agents use case, but it's not a use case because
how people actually use it, it's just a tool.

Like it's the same as I would say like a script for Java, you know?

Yes.

Yes, yes.

And nobody uses it.

A few customers like...

They use it, yes, but not like a lot, no.

And you advertise the MPC ~ C P server?

Like if I search on Google for ~ C P screenshots, you're gonna appear?

I don't know, it's a good question.

I want to check this one, mcpscreenshots.

Well, let's see.

~

No, I think it's like-

fun.

Yes.

No, no, no.

I'm not appearing here.

MCP market.

Capture process screenshots with MCP.

Screenshot as a dev tool.

Okay.

There's a GitHub one.

Cursor Community has one.

Take screenshots with Playwright MCP.

yeah, that makes sense.

But you have to have playwright.

So okay, that's fair, but you have to have playwright.

Pulse MCP enables AI to capture and analyze screenshots from the desktop on demand.

Okay.

no, oh it's desktop, no.

All right.

Guide to taking screenshots with a server.

Page pixels.

That's fun.

Okay, let's just for fun see what this is.

Yes, yes.

Learn how to connect.

~ got let's see.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, it feels like a brother.

Yes, it could be.

Yes, yes.

It could be.

Yes, yes.

And they're

they're and you're not there.

I didn't see you yet.

Yes, yes.

Let's see, where are you?

They're there.

There's a lot of people chatting that didn't say you.

You're not on the first page, which means you're not there.

So, ~ okay.

So obviously Google's not the end all.

In fact, it's much more likely people would search, I think, in in AI for this, right?

Rather than Google.

So let's just say that little test is not conclusive.

But what I would say is you're probably not giving it a good try yet.

It might be.

Yes.

Like

it's like what I would want to hear from you is ~

While I have 30k of MRR from human beings doing screenshots and you know, maybe I can go
to 40k, stuff like that, that's fine.

Here's where the magic is.

If I can get someone to configure an MCP server in their AI system, don't even say the
word agent.

It doesn't matter.

Codex and Cloud Code, maybe it's an agent, maybe it's just their cloud code project.

I don't care.

If I can get them to do that, and I can get them to wire that up, then AI just uses it.

Like

The person may not even ask for a screenshot, but the AI decided.

I need a screenshot.

Right.

It goes off and gets one.

Right.

And so ~ that's the future because how many people are going to do that?

~ in the future?

~ everyone, whether they know it or not.

Okay.

Or whatever it is, it's an is a j an unthinkably large number of people are going to be
doing stuff like this.

Like even just saying what's the size of the market is sort of silly.

It's like, I don't know, like a lot.

And so the question is when someone searches for MCP screenshot, I need to come up so that
they do it.

Because if I can get embedded in thousands and then tens of thousands of projects, yes,
many many of them are temporary.

Yes, many of them only do two screenshots a month.

And so they'll stay on the free plan or whatever.

But that's how I'm that's the that's the future.

That's how I'm gonna get in the future.

And and actually, like maybe sometimes people

For months don't do much, but then suddenly they just happen to do something with AI that
requires a lot of screenshots.

And so they end up paying me that one month, you know, right?

Because their credit card's on file.

So that one month they run up a bill, but then the next month and they're not anymore.

But they're a customer in the sense that they have an account with me.

I have a more flexible pricing plan where it's pay by usage with a free tier.

So most of the time it's free, but then they use the if it's variable, it's fine.

And when that's plugged into AI.

It's easier for that to be variable and it's easier for that to just stay in.

In fact, if person A configures the system and person B uses the system, person B might
generate a lot of screenshots and not even know it because person A is the one who made

it, and person B doesn't even know exactly what the AI is doing or why.

That's fine.

This is all this is the future.

You could say I'm just I'm just I'm just very verbosely describing what this strategy is,
what this future is, this view of of how.

Yes.

could

transform.

And so step one of all that, of course, is when someone intentionally searches for MCP
screenshot, you gotta show up so that you they pick you.

They, you know, that where they even have a chance to pick you.

And you're not, you're not really like intentionally doing that.

So it's possible that AI does save it and AI does get you to 100K and and beyond with ~

Being visible that way, maybe you need a CLI as well as MCP, because a lot of people don't
like MCP, but okay, you clearly you can do all that.

That's that's that part is in fact not hard, actually, right?

So you you have all the ways.

You have the MCP way, you have the direct API way, of course, which you already do.

Maybe you have an SDK.

Yeah, you have an SDK for to for for TypeScript and for ~ and for Python so that AI could
get it that way.

~ you have CLI.

Okay, so you have all these different ways that AI likes all these ways.

So that no matter how you do your AI, there's a way, ~ an easy way for you to wire it up.

And then you promote it that way.

You you market it intentionally that way to try to get people to do that.

And those Reddit threads that I just saw on Google, you need to come up there.

And if you're not, then you need to say then you need to be watching Reddit and answering
eventually.

Hope hopefully other people do that for you.

Of course, that's better.

But this is what you would do if this.

So let's call this option D is ~

It's the current product under the hood, but it's AI.

AI is the future.

AI is the way it's so the current business will still be there.

And it's how you're gonna maintain the business and maintain the profit and maybe go from
30 to 40k just by natural activity.

~ under you know, that that that's fine.

But option D is yes, I'm not gonna, you know, you know, stop doing that, but but the way
this company's gonna get to 100k is.

AI in including AI, which means I need every integration possible.

I need to be visible in a marketing sense in every way.

~ in in those AI ways.

I need to make I need to talk about AI.

I need other people who are influencers in AI to talk about me, all that kind of stuff.

That's what needs to happen because I'm going to grow through AI integrations and a
pricing plan specifically for that, which probably is again variable so that people can

use it as much or as little as as as makes sense.

Or not.

Like I don't know, you'd have to talk to customers to figure out what the right pricing
plan is.

But maybe something like that would make sense.

So it's easy for them to sign up.

But also if if AI happens to use it a lot, you get paid.

So ~ this would be option D.

And again, like what I just articulated is unlikely to be exactly the right plan of action
because we just made it up, right?

But something along those lines where the strategy is get embedded in AI and let AI do the
activity for you.

~ with everything else behind that.

supporting that integration's pricing it's and ~ scaling and so on.

~ that's option D, let's call it.

It's time to it's time to plug into AI.

How does that strike you?

It's exciting.

There is one caveat.

Like I'm not...

I'm not sure 100 % that it might work in a way...

Because when I myself personally use Codex or CodeCode, yes, they have access to my
browser.

They have access to all these tools and how often do I really need screenshots in this use
case?

For example, if we talk about personal usage, yes, but if we talk about...

It's...

~

It's interesting, yes, it's one of the options I would consider.

At least because I didn't try it.

What you just did is you articulated a

very good part of your sales pitch.

In other words, your sales pitch to someone who says, Why would I need that?

I can just tell AI to take a screenshot.

And you would say, Well, let's think about that for a second.

If it's on their server, they're not taking a screenshot.

They're like pawing through the HTML.

Yes.

And often they're like, I got a 404 error.

I get that all the time.

Or a 500 error doesn't let me do that, or it doesn't know how to render the site.

Like all the time.

It it doesn't work.

And then you say, No, no, no, but I can run it locally.

And in my browser, it can take the screenshot.

I would say, that's true.

All you have to do is give it access to your browser, which means literally everything in
your life, which is incredibly scary.

And in many

corporate contexts not allowed, right?

And so, and so in many corporate contexts, that's not an option physically, because they
don't allow it.

And just in general, that's not such a good idea.

You know, just for a screenshot, they have it also has access to all your email in your
bank.

Just because you wanted to screenshot an Amazon listing.

Not sure that's a great idea.

Right.

And so ~ so this is so what you just did is articulate a sales pitch, which I like a good
sales pitch.

I like it.

But it did not answer the question which was

How does it strike you in terms of emotionally?

What is how exciting is that?

Are you like, hell yeah, let's go get a let's let's go do AI screenshots.

It feels like one of the most exciting options.

Let's say out of four, it's pretty...

I really like it.

And because I also didn't invest in it, you know, like I didn't promote it much.

It's interesting at least to try, at least to be in the first position and to see what
happens.

It feels...

I cannot say it's like 100 % yeah, but it's one of the top.

It feels like...

It would be one of the top priorities to test.

you okay, good.

If if ~ if you just went with option C and sold the business and never tr never even tried
for a week to do the AI, do you think later you'd regret not trying?

Or would you say, ~ I mean I had a better idea anyway.

I might regret, because this kind of product and this step...

a door, a door in this AI experience, AI market.

Like I already have it, I can just open and check like how's it going.

But starting from scratch again, like entering this, you know, like AI agents and all
this, I think it will be painful experience to sell it and then start again from scratch

without anything, you know, like from zero, like it feels like I might not regret it, but
it feels, yeah, okay, regret, yes, okay.

I mean it right, because starting from scratch, of course, it always sounds exciting.

I mean, we're we're ~ we're we're entrepreneurs, so like of course we like st starting a
new thing.

Like that's the part of what it is, right?

~ and on the other hand, we remember, ~ but most of the time it doesn't work at all.

And it's really hard.

Even when it does work, it's really hard.

It's a hard scrabble.

Like to get to where you are now is hard and unlikely.

So doing that again is like, like it's really exciting and also god dang.

Yeah

like,

man, I don't know.

I I already got here.

Do I really have to start over?

So it can be again emotionally, it sounds like you're on the fence there, 'cause it is
exciting to start over, but you can see you also see that emotional thing of Man, I have

all this.

Like if if that next thing could still be this thing, but but pivoting, ~ that would be
way easier than, you know, like ~

It sounds like you're also there, like, and again, like it's okay not not to really know.

I mean, that's a good thing to ponder, right?

It's a good thing for you to continue to ponder because it's the right question.

Okay.

So, ~ what's nice about option D is you can absolutely right now go try it and do better
than you were doing.

In other words, ~ right now you could go through the top

You could go through the first, let's say, three to five pages of Google listings and Kagi
Kaji listings and duck duck go listings for this, see what kinds of things show up, and

start to get a feel for like what would I need to do?

What do I want to do?

Where do I need to be seen?

Should I go talk should I go leave a comment on one of those Reddit forums today?

I I just can't I you know probably one work to leave one comment one forum, but if it's
the third search result on Google, it might be worth it.

Is there now?

Here's where I do actually think that with AI coding, you could do some things very
quickly.

Like you have your MCP server, but maybe it needs better documentation or a certain GitHub
repository.

I don't know.

Well, with AI, you could get all that real fast, right?

~ maybe you have it already, but if you didn't, you could do that really fast.

~ same with a CLI.

I also need a CLI.

You could do that in an afternoon with Claude because you've already done all the other
work, right?

Because

You already have the API, you already have SDKs, you already have MCP server.

So like because of that, you could you could do the CLI that that Claude likes ~ in an
afternoon and put it up on a GitHub repository or or include it in your existing one or

whatever.

Absolutely, you could do that in an afternoon with so there's some things like that where
you could like, you know, in a couple of afternoons, it could be really pretty solid in

certain areas like ~ integrations.

~ you could you could also say, you know what, I'm gonna have a plugin.

Sorry, I'm gonna have a Python.

~ package.

I'm gonna have a TypeScript NPM package.

I'm gonna have maybe one other thing, maybe not.

~ and again, Cloud could given that you already have all the stuff and it's just wrapping
an API that already exists, Cloud Code could absolutely make those.

And you just get accounts with the right places and and you know so in other words you
could have this nice array of integrations that people who do AI generally like and I know

you have some of these already, whatever.

I mean by the end of the week you could have those or at least by Monday you could have
those.

just pr a pretty strong offering in in terms of the integrations.

And now getting the word out is okay, that's a little harder, but you could just start
doing stuff.

You could start, you have a big Twitter account.

You could start tweeting about it.

You could start tweeting at certain things.

You could ~ you could again you could get on this some of these Reddit things.

You could post your own things there.

You could is there someone who also makes YouTube videos or tweets or whatever where
they're also technical and I don't know, just the kind of maybe you know them already.

And you could say, hey, I'm just trying to get this MCP thing off the ground.

Maybe we could do a podcast together, or maybe, maybe just as a friend, you would ~ you
know, make a tweet about it just because like we're friends and help help me out, you

know?

Like you could so obviously none of these things are quote unquote scalable, or how you
would, you know, right?

Of course not, but that's not you're doing on step one.

Step one is how quickly can I get a decent product together?

Quickly, I think, in your case.

and and like what could I do to test the waters or just see?

can I drum up a drum up a little bit of attention?

What is that like?

And of course, then talking to those people.

So you have some people using the MCP server.

Now you need to talk to them with a structured conversation.

You know, I have articles on this and everything about how to do that to understand them.

And again, you could do some of this, let's call it quote unquote, you know, manual
marketing.

And and again, if that generates even a little bit of activity, great.

Like try to talk to them again.

understanding this better.

So you get a better view of like what is this?

What could this be like?

So that's that's that's what I think of when I think of how would you test option D.

You don't have to select it.

But like in the next so it's July 1st now.

By the end of the month, could you have fully tested whether option D is good and also ~

I don't I also have a in greater detail what is option D.

Like we know what it is generally, plug into A AI, but there's all these open questions.

What for, how would I find customers, what language do they use?

What kinds of integrations do I need?

What use cases should I talk about that are more likely for people to actually need in the
context of AI specifically?

Cause it's not this necessarily the same use cases.

So what are those use cases?

The people that do use AI, why?

And and and right.

And so by the end of the month, could you know?

here's what option D would be, and here's some answers to some of those types of questions
that would fully articulate what our option D really means.

You could decide that's my goal for this month, period.

I'm gonna run the business the way it is.

~ obviously, like if there's something catastrophic, I have to fix it.

I have to keep up with my tech support tickets.

I can't stop doing marketing because this pays the bills.

But other than running the business at a just the lowest possible level, that's not.

harmful to the business or your customers.

Every other second is gonna be sp this month is going to be spent vetting option D with
the kinds of questions I just said.

So that I so that I can decide, A, what is option D?

Exactly.

What are we talking about?

And B, am I super excited to go do that or not?

Or or after all of that exploration, am I like, yeah, I see it now and gosh, no, I don't
want to.

Like we right, like that's possible.

But like maybe, maybe you need to go see in order to find out, right?

Yes.

See?

I thought about option C.

yeah, maybe you need you need to go explore and ~ in in order to find

out like what is option D and do I like it?

Right.

Yes, it's a good phone.

So that could be a good plan for this month.

Run the business at a skeleton level, basic level, and spend all of your time vetting
option D, meaning that you're ~ doing all these things I said.

You're creating this full integrations, you're talking to people, you're doing manual
marketing to drum up some attention and just seeing what that's like.

How easy is that?

What's the feedback like?

You're interviewing both existing customers who use MCP and these new, this new attention.

You're doing interviews or otherwise finding out answers to all these questions.

You're gonna get a list of questions.

You're gonna make a list of questions.

Again, I have that I have that article about how to interview customers, right?

So you're you're gonna have these goals like the ones I just listed.

You'll come up with your own as well.

And then you're gonna come up with ~ your hypotheses of what what are the answers to
those.

You know, half of them are wrong.

That's okay.

Then you're gonna invent really good questions and then you're gonna execute that.

This is what the article lays out, as I'm sure you know already.

~ so you're gonna do that, and that's what I mean by vetting option D, right?

Like you build integrations, you get some attention, you do these kind of structured
interviews.

Even on Twitter, where it's not so structured, you can still ask these questions.

Like if you have good, if you generated good questions with that method, right?

You have again a big Twitter following, you can still ~ ask some these questions in
general.

Now, of course, asking

In the general Twitter audience, you're gonna get random answers.

That's not very high signal compared to a real customer.

So of course, you're gonna modulate your ~ what what you do with that information
accordingly.

However, it's still information, it's still good, especially at this stage.

That's still good.

And you're leveraging something you have, which is a Twitter following, ~ to get some more
information.

So you can do that too.

And so I just made up one month just because it's it's ~ if you only did it for three
days, you wouldn't really find out.

And you don't want to be exploring for six months because it shouldn't take that much time
and you don't have that kind of time.

And it just doesn't make sense.

So it doesn't have to be the end of the month.

It's just a convenient something like that.

~ you know, something like three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, something like that makes
sense to give it a good ~ attempt, especially with interviewing customers because it's

hard to schedule.

I I could do something next Tuesday, then on Tuesday they don't show or they reschedule,
right?

Like that's what happens when you try to talk to customers, right?

So you need

calendar time in order to actually pull that off, it turns out.

So that's what's in my mind when I say something like like four weeks or even longer.

But ~ but you could set an an intention of like that's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna I'm gonna spend all my time that I can ~ vetting option D.

expense like and putting the business like on the slow burner let's like to not yes yes

Otherwise you don't have the time to really do it.

You need to be doing it for hours a day.

Yeah, because you're really trying.

yes, yes, I actually hold all, I have all this stuff that you mentioned, like CLI, MCP,
like integration page, like everything, but I never actually really promoted it.

I never was focused on it.

Like, you know, 100 % like I'm just doing this stuff and that's it.

Like I didn't do it that way.

I just, you know, I shared a little bit here and there and I found some customers and oh,
okay.

Okay.

So it's like.

I didn't see that face.

Yeah, and and and that's fine.

And so so you've already built it.

So I I think what you could do though is you could say, ~ well, I built it, but now that
I'm thinking from as a marketer, I not only want to document there is this MCP, there is

this CLI, there is this Python library, I want to convince someone to use it, which is
different from just documentation.

It's both, it's both, but

Like the headline of the page is different when it's just reference material versus when
it's trying to convince someone to implement this for some reason.

So when you get into the details of how the API works, then it's just technical
documentation.

Fine.

But that's not what the homepage is.

I say homepage, but the main page that you land on when you search for MCP screenshots
isn't just a boring technical document, it's marketing.

So

I think what you could do is say, all right, I have basically have all the tech.

I'm going to take a pass now.

I'm going to think about it as a marketer now and take a pass over that, saying, wait, how
do I get someone excited about this, not just tell them what it is?

And ~ and so again, maybe that's just an afternoon, right?

Like does that be a lot?

But like, but you wanna do that.

That's gonna be part of this, is it's marketing.

You're gonna wanna go to your actual homepage of the whole ~ company and also talk about
this.

Maybe there's special landing pages for it, or maybe maybe the MCP stuff is the landing
page.

But anyway, you're gonna direct some traffic there somehow.

~ SEO obviously is hard to is hard to do quickly.

That's one of its disadvantages, is that you don't just rank really fast.

Nevertheless, you could try by thinking about SEO for those very pages and also with ~
things to write, or maybe even guest post something because that might rank more quickly.

Right, but you could try to think how do I how do I generate that that way?

Yes, yes.

but again, there might be a lot of more manual marketing, because again, you're just
trying to do it.

You could even spend some money.

Like the good news is your profit, you're you have good profits.

You could decide to spend $10,000 in advertising for this.

Again, not that you would do this forever, not that that's a great way to go.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

I don't know.

But that's not the point.

That's not what we're doing right now.

We're trying to find out is this a good idea and what is the idea exactly?

Right.

And so you could spend money, whether it's AdWords or something else.

On something like MCP and screenshots to drive people there.

Find out.

Then put a web chat thing there, a live web chat, so that when you drive them there,
occasionally you actually talk to them.

So, right, these are all these are all the kinds of things one does, including spending
money to explore and discover.

And you might say, my gosh, like I spent 5k and sure, I had some conversations that was
useful, but that is a terrible way to get a customer.

And I would Yeah, I believe you.

Right.

But you know, it's a very different question to ask.

How do I find out?

Is a very different question than now how do I have a repeatable sales process?

And by that I don't necessarily mean a human being doing sales.

I mean the the process of marketing to find someone and then selling is closing them, even
if it's all hands-free, right?

The question of how do I do an ~ automated and efficient marketing and sales process is a
very, very different question from is this a good idea and what is the idea?

And so

Think about spending money and time answering that question.

It's worth 5K to find out, 10K to find out, given that you're so profitable that you have
the money, it's worth that to discover is this exciting and the next thing for the

company?

Or you might say, Nope, this sucks.

And now I'm sure because I I put in all this time, I even spent thousands of dollars.

Now I'm sure it's a bad idea.

And that's fantastic to know that.

You probably learned something else in the process as well that you can bring to.

then the the final decision.

Yes, yes.

Okay, okay.

And it's gonna be a slog.

Like I think I think some of it's exciting because it's new, but I f well at least I now
I'm projecting myself onto you.

But I find that kind of stuff can be a slog.

Doing the pay landing pages, testing things, getting ads.

They usually don't work.

Posting on Reddit and then people say nasty things.

~ you know, trying to get other people to to tweet, then finally someone does, and you
know, three people go to the website, no one talks to you.

~ and just

It's such a grind, you know this, but such a grind like you have to a ask ten people to
even help before one person helps.

You have to run a thousand ads before ten people click.

~ you know, it's just ~ you have to beg to get customer interviews even for people that
are already customers.

It's just a slog, you know.

So ~ I g I I know, but I think you owe it to yourself to do the slog for the and and

It's also a reason why it's useful to set a date because it's useful to know I'm doing
this slog, but I'm doing it for 30 days or whatever, right?

I'm doing it for four weeks.

It gives you like it's easier to do it when you know like it's gonna end.

And at the end of it, I'm gonna really know either this is the future of the company, and
I even know what that looks like, which is gonna be freaking insanely amazing.

Or I'm gonna say, I absolutely know that this is not one of the options, and now I have a
better idea of what.

Options are okay, and now I'm sure and that was also worth it.

So time bound being time bound helps you get through the slog part.

Yes, yes.

My brain is exploding from all these options.

Yes.

Well, we only have four options.

There's maybe more, but this is good.

D is kind of like...

it's a combination of some of them, like it's...

also it's A in a sense, like I can still go with A, like it's also...

it's also...

yes, yes, yes, not for the next one.

all of your attention on it's gonna take all your time to do a good job in vetting option
D.

You're gonna be tempted to do option A because it's easier.

I can hide in Visual Studio and add a feature.

Right?

~ that's easier than trying to get a customer on the phone and ask them questions.

So you're be tempted to go do option A because option A is smart.

They're all smart.

All these options are smart.

That's why they're on the list at all, because they're all fine, you know.

But but it but if you allow yourself to slip into option A, what you're doing is you're
ensuring that you will not find out whether option D is a good idea.

You will do a bad job of it, probably conclude option D can't work.

But that was an incorrect but that that you wrote you would have arrived at that decision
incorrectly because you didn't really try.

So that would be like the the the founder who makes a product and then like makes four
tweets about it to their 300 followers.

Sales don't immediately appear.

And so they go, ~ that's stupid.

I'm moving on to my next idea.

And then they they think they're smart because they did 10 of these in a year.

But in fact, it's dumb because what they did is just ensured they planted a seed and never
gave it water and then it didn't come up.

Yes.

yeah, but I planted lots of seeds that didn't come up.

Okay.

No.

because

in this case it's interesting because like one month feels it's good enough period to
invest time and to build something but will I get like all this feedback you know like

from customers in one month?

Maybe not.

Maybe not.

So so

of course you will decide in fact what to do.

I made that I made that up as a as a stake in the ground because the answer's not one week
and the answer's not six months.

So I put that as a stake in the ground.

But what's really gonna happen is just what you said, three weeks in, you're gonna see the
end of this timeline coming up and you'll just decide.

Yeah, I think one more week's enough, where you'll say, Man, I got three customer calls ~
on the books.

Of course I'm gonna see that through.

Of course, like that we made up this deadline.

It's it's we can do whatever we want.

Right.

So the really it's just ~ a week is not enough, six months is is too long.

You need to drive to this result because you need to decide whether it is or isn't right
so that you know whether you're picking it and what it is, or you are selecting a

different option and getting going on that other option, whatever it is.

You don't want to be in this, in this, in this weird spot for six months.

Also, again, I'm insisting, you'll do what you want, of course.

It doesn't you don't have to do what I say, but I'm insisting that you not do option A.

Okay, but if you don't do option A, you can't just do that.

You can't just do nothing for a year and expect this company to be okay, right?

I mean, I know you know this, right?

You you gotta work on the company.

So for a month you can get away with that.

Not a year.

And so this is again why why I'm trying to time bound it, because you wanna you do want to
set option A aside, but you can't do that.

for a really extended period of time or you'll you'll ruin the company that you have.

So

So, why did you say do not go with option A for a...

like why do you insist to not go with option A?

Or I just misunderstood you.

Well, so I I'm just explaining why I think a a year a a month or maybe two, you have to
figure out option D because I'm telling you to not do option A during that time.

And and but if you were to do that for six months and just explore and ignore the company
for six months effectively, that's not okay.

So that you need a time balance.

It's okay to ignore it for a little while while you look work on option D.

But that can't be

a long time.

So that's why I'm trying to so if it ends up being five weeks, six weeks, of course that's
fine.

But I'm just, you know, we're trying to limit it to something like that.

So it doesn't, it's not accidentally, you know, 10 weeks and and actually hurts the
company in in fact.

Yes, yes, I thought you meant the option A in isolation, like, do not go with option A at
all.

Yes, yes, I see, I see.

I see.

well, this is fun.

Maybe there's more options, but ~ I always find that when I explore like this, ~ some
hypotheses I had are found to be true or directionally true, but now I have a better idea

of exactly what direction.

And half of them are false, which is very useful.

And then there's all this stuff I never thought of that I then discover.

And I don't even know what they're gonna be, right?

Like d definitionally I don't know what they're gonna be.

So, what I think is we've already identified four plausible options.

Surely there are more, but hey, that's good.

And I think in exploring option D, there will be new things that neither you nor I know at
this moment.

And whatever those are, those will help you make a better decision later.

A more informed, confident decision.

Because after all, if you find out this is also a bad idea for a product.

You might be more certain that option C, selling the business, is correct.

Because you're like, no, like the single best way to stay with the business was option D,
and it's wrong.

And even that's wrong.

Even AI can't save this business.

I gotta sell it.

Okay.

~ Now you're way more sure.

Like that, that's great.

Because right now you're you're like, I'm excited about that, but I'm not so sure.

If you could just get more certain, that would be really great, you know?

So

Or vice versa.

You discover option D is super exciting, absolutely possible.

And my gosh, we just and it's the answer.

That's how we're gonna get to 100k.

We did it.

Maybe.

So I just think in the in the exploration, who knows what else you'll discover that will
help inform that.

Or it ~ often often what happens is option E and F appear in the process of discovery, and
those are better.

You know, again, great, you know.

~ so I would you know, your mindset is explore.

Discover.

So you're not leaping to a judgment.

You're not ~ making decisions about the future yet.

You're exploring what is the truth, what's going on, how do people actually think?

What do people actually do?

What do people want to pay for?

How do people pay for it?

What the it's a discovery, not judgment.

And so with that mindset, just for this time period, and you can go back to it, you know,
then you go back to the other mindset, right?

In this

Period.

That's the mindset.

You have the company running ~ as as with as l little attention as possible, and you're in
a discovery exploring mindset for the next roughly four weeks, six weeks, to be

open-minded and discover about this thing.

Even if the result is hell no, the only way you're gonna confidently say that is if you
have truly explored with

complete open mind and excitement and right in that mindset, only then, if you still
decide no, will you be very confident in that.

So that's the right attitude ~ f for this period.

Yes, yes.

I feel, I feel I need to feel it, you know, like it's an exhaustive option.

Like I tried everything to make it work and it doesn't.

Yes.

And I didn't.

it sounds like there's nothing else

that even plausibly could get you there.

That's incremental, the option A, right?

This one at least is possible, so you gotta go find out.

Yeah.

yes.

I still want to check customers, like to check every customer, their use case and maybe I
will see some pattern again, yes, but...

But I didn't see it, like...

Yes.

I still want to make sure that...

I didn't miss anything.

you know, I

I would never say don't go check, right?

~ but but I think you said it earlier.

If it was a clear one, you would just know that already because you would have ten
examples in your head immediately or twenty and you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's this.

And since since it's not, like I I don't know why poking around would suddenly make that
appear.

see a logic as yes

z w sometimes that does it is the case in a bigger organization, when any one person
cannot see everything that's going on.

Right.

Everyone has some fog of war in a in a larger organization.

In that case, it's quite possible that there's this thing that's true, and yet you can't
you don't know that because you don't s you can't see that.

You're not close enough to that thing to know it's true.

That happens constantly in a big company.

It's one of the

One of the difficulties in operating in and and managing that organiz a larger
organization is that you can't know everything.

~ so then it's true you need to dig and find out because maybe there's a pattern that's
obvious when you look.

But that's not your situation.

You do literally everything.

You see every support ticket, you know, you talk to every customer who wants to be talked
to, you see how they use the product, you get the feature requests, and so on.

You see it all.

Now, maybe you could poke in an interview more.

Okay, maybe.

But you see it all.

There is no fog of war for you in that sense.

~ so like if if there was an obvious big pattern, how would you not see it all?

Like what why would you quote unquote looking be information you don't already have?

Now, could there be a subtle small pattern that you never noticed?

Yes, that I believe.

That I that I believe.

But a subtle small pattern, that's back to option A.

Small, small pattern is not how you get to 100K, right?

That's

That is how I would think about option A is ask.

~ this is only 5% of my customers that do this.

But they're great customers.

So maybe if I just get if I get more customers like that, then I could move that from 5%
of my base doing that to 10% of my base doing that.

It's still a tiny amount, right?

But those are but if those are great, profitable long-term customers, then adding those,
that's very good.

And incrementally, that's how you get like.

All right, now I got from 30 to 40, 40 to 50.

Right?

That's how I do that, is I find these little pockets.

Then going back to the metrics and really looking, that I believe.

That then I'm I agree.

Because that kind of subtlety isn't necessarily obvious when you're not looking, even when
it's just you.

That I agree with.

But with option, ~ but but if we're talking about a big new thing that's gonna save the
whole company that's lurking, it's unlikely.

So

You you should still go look for your own s ~ sanity because if you don't go look, you'll
always wonder.

I didn't look though.

I didn't look.

I needed that I could have been there.

So I agree with you.

Go look.

I'm just saying why why yeah, I'm just saying, like, look, I don't expect you to find
anything, and that's okay.

You know, that's okay.

Yeah.

it's like it's like also you know like to to kind of close this option like a in a sense
like like to make sure like I tried everything click and now I see for sure and I have

hard data to see that okay so there is no pattern I can actually see but but it's like yes
it's it's on this on the side yeah

Okay, we've been going for a long time.

We're full.

We have some good options.

We know what to do next.

So of course I'm excited to hear how it goes.

So let me know how it goes.

~ even along the way, or if you want to, you know, poke me with questions or things you
want to share separately, that's fine.

but I'm really curious.

I'm really, really curious to see how this goes.

I mean, this is your life.

This is your whole life we're talking about.

I am super grateful to you.

I appreciate all this conversation and it's my mind is exploding now, know, it's kind of
there is is a lot of information and thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for all this.

And also, ~ I'm grateful

to you as well because I mean almost no one is willing to just go share that all their
numbers and do all that kind stuff.

And also this is this is selfishly great for me because I can maybe, you know, edit this
and put it on YouTube and get tens of views, maybe hundreds, and ~ the way that's gonna be

great.

~ may then then I can finally retire.

Thank you, thank you.

Yes, it was actually a lot of questions you asked and like many perspectives I didn't
think about.

Well, thank you.

Thank you, Jason.

Well I appreciate it and let me know how it goes.

I wanna hear.

Okay, see ya.

See you.