- Published on
Episode 11 of Morning Maker Show: Solo Entrepreneurs Unleashed: Chasing Dreams from Beaches to Code
- Authors
- Name
- Morning Maker Show
Summary
🏝️ Dive into the entrepreneurial oasis with Dan and Sandra as they share island stories, discuss innovative AI code assistants, and dream about the perfect tech job. From task managers to time tracker apps, this episode is a rollercoaster of solo entrepreneurial adventures.
Grab your virtual sunscreen and join. Let's go!
Join the conversation & see the tweets/posts we read! Stop by our space 💬
Transcript
Dan: Good morning, Sandra.
Sandra: Good morning. It's you and me this morning.?
How are
Dan: you this
Sandra: fine morning? I have to tell you. Um, it's very good. It's it's actually very good. It's very nice. Nice. I'm very happy. Um,
Dan: how are you? I, I'm very jealous and I would like to be on an island too, if I could. Actually, I am on an island, but it's just a very cold one.
Hey, we're both on an island.
Sandra: Like beaches from my home is like 10 minutes walk. It's just not the right beach, you know?
Dan: Yeah, it's well, it's the right beach, but not the right temperature. Exactly. So how has it been there? How is it working from the beach?
Sandra: Um, well, it's quite um, to be somewhere in January and you expect it to be very cold and it's very warm and there are still like, um, Christmas decoration and new year decoration.
And it's just really funny for me. People are quite happy, which makes it this situation so weird. There is a lot of sun which makes my son nose burn, which I'm very happy about it. Yeah, I could talk and talk about it, but I cannot wait to go back to Finland as well.
Dan: How was it when you landed and you had your jackets and all your scarves and so on?
I got
Sandra: It was so funny because I almost left my scarf to, um, check in lady. I was like, I don't think I will need this.
Dan: Wow. Yeah, that's the best feeling when you come in. I once did it, and I came into 30 something degrees with the jacket, and it was actually quite painful to have that many clothes on, like, I was, I couldn't, like, what you do, yeah, you can give it to the check in lady, but
Sandra: It doesn't work. I mean, it's a very nice feeling, I have to tell you, like, but I don't think I would be able to live somewhere where it's, like, all the time like this.
Dan: Yeah. It's too
Sandra: good. It's too good to be true. It's like you would get used to this happiness, and then it would be very hard to make yourself happy. Other
Dan: ways. Yeah. So you're, you're not going to be a digital nomad and go to Bali.
Sandra: Not for you. Not, not, not my couple.
Dan: All right. Let's get into it then. I have the first one here by active member of the community.
Do you want
Sandra: to take it? Yes. Um, punch time tracker is live on Product Hunt.
Your support would mean the whole world. Why to me? Um, it was 23 hours ago, but I think we still have some time to support olive.
Dan: Yeah. Half an hour left actually. So, so punch times record. Is an air table app that helps block your time, conquer your calendar, and knock out wasted
Sandra: hours.
Oh no, again, productivity app, which I have to
Dan: try. Yeah, you have to try this, you have no choice. It looks very good, I think. Olive is very talented design wise. Yeah. I really like her, her marketing and a lot of animations.
Sandra: Yeah. And she also has some kind of like peaceful, um, moment around her. And it's, I'm really vibing
Dan: with that.
Yeah. Yeah. She, I, her whole feed is So wholesome somehow like you. Yeah, you have a good time when you read her updates. It's a very like talented as writing as well. So congratulations on the launch. Let me actually, can we see? Is it? Is it still? Is it the 1st? Yeah, it's number 1. Wow. It's number 1. She is 26 minutes away from getting product of the day.
That's fantastic. So people, please, uh, help her out if you haven't yet. This is amazing.
Sandra: Do we have like three minutes to tell you a story?
Story time ✨
Because I just remember what I dreamt last night. Yeah, please. Please. I love the story. I just remembered. This is so weird. I'm such a weird person. Oh my God. I had a dream that I was sitting with the lady who is the CEO of Product Hunt.
She was sitting at the table with me and my mother and guys, it seems like the Product Hunt is going for the redesign because I even remember the name. It's called Obsidian and it's going to be blue, but they are very scared to push it because they don't know how people will react. to it. She was sitting between me and my mother.
Dan: Wait, but the CEO of product on who is that is not. No, no, no, no. This is a lady. Okay. Okay. So maybe your your wish for a CEO was sitting there and then that CEO just happened to engage with the community and my mother all of a sudden and you're which is
Sandra: part of the community at this point. Yeah, very important
Dan: member.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I also had a product hunt launch. It went, it went well, I think. So I actually didn't expect to get in the top 10 because I didn't do much marketing and I didn't talk about it and I didn't do the teaser. I didn't do anything really. Well, I did, I did spend an entire day before the launch and that, you know, that, cause I was supposed to do some stuff for you.
Uh, and then I thought, well, this is going to go badly, but actually ended up in number five. I was. Number eight for a long time. And I didn't, I didn't do something to push it really. I, of course I wrote about it in the end, did a post on Reddit too, which didn't go, didn't go bad. Didn't go good. It was just, okay.
We've got some upvotes, but no one told me I'm an idiot. That's
Sandra: and that's very hard job on. Yeah. And it's so congratulating. Yeah.
Dan: Thank you. Yeah. So I think it was still some value in the product that people. Uploaded it anyway, and that's kind of when I wanted to test if you put a product without, you know, putting too much of the community in it or your user base or whatever, you know, doing email campaigns and so on, can it go up?
And I think realistically, it's very hard to go in the top three without it. Even if the product's useful, I mean, it wasn't a big product and I'm not going to pretend it was, you know, the, the best thing ever. And it wasn't AI also, so it didn't have hype. Okay, but you can still get, you know, top five.
That's, that's decent. That's a decent position at the end. So, yeah, that's my update. All right. I can take, um, I can take the next one. Yes. Stef.
Stef, he's like, he's doing every show. He's saying, I need a reliable and cheap Postgres SQL provider, or just Postgres. What's the best offering out there?
I can answer this. You probably want Supabase or Hetzner. I think depending on what you do, Supabase might be good. I don't know if you know about their pricing, Sandra. It's like really good. If you try to do the same, sort of replicate the, sorry?
Sandra: Please continue, I wanted to ask what is the pricing
Dan: model?
It's like 20 bucks a month, and that's it. And you get database, authentication, storage, and you know, you get like a pretty solid package to build an entire Uh, Sass essentially or any kind of app. And if you tried to do this yourself, first of all, you're going to spend a lot more time doing it. And then there's really, I've tried it.
There's really no way to get it down to 20 if you, if you actually use all of those things, like if you just need a database as Stef is asking, you can get a cheaper one. I think Hetzner, maybe you can get for even 5. Or used to anyway, uh, so you can get it just a database a lot cheaper, but the whole package and super bases is awesome.
So it could be our next sponsor.
Sandra: I fully agree. And I think the first comment he said is like, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm going with super base.
Dan: Oh, it was, uh, let me open the comments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, he chose super base, yeah. So a lot of people, oh yeah. Philipp proposes. Hetzner for, yeah. 4.5 Euro.
That's maybe $5. I dunno. Is the euro still strong? Yeah, maybe. Okay, very cool. Good luck stuff with your database. Wanna take the next one? Yes,
Sandra: um, Jamshid.
Finally, my new framer template is done. Model, a clean, minimal template will help you start your subscription based design studio faster. One page template without annoying animations.
Live review here. Yes, I think it's time for us also to Start this design studio. Like, even if you don't have any design, much more, like,
Dan: I think we need to jump on this. Yeah. You know, framer, um, I know another person, Daniela. She, she's a great, dear person in the community that has done a few framer templates and she actually had a lot of success with it, like to the point where she could just do this.
Oh yeah. And what, or she could see herself just doing this, just doing templates. Apparently there's quite a little bit of money in it and the more you make the, it kind of scales. It's nicely, yeah, yeah, because you also sell the other templates that you've made. So the more you make, the more you, you earn, of course, and it scales quite well.
And apparently there's a lot of people buying this type of stuff. So, yeah,
Sandra: I mean, it's brilliant. I especially, especially dig products that are able to bring the community aspect and people on it to build something and then sell. It's such a brilliant model.
Dan: Yeah, this design looks very nice actually, I'm looking at it, so check out, the link is themodule.framer.website. Looks, uh, looks quite cool. Very well done. Jamshid
Sandra: Jam s#$%.
Dan: Alright, next one, bye. Sidi Jeddou. correct?
Thank you. This is a huge achievement for a two weeks old website. Rapid form started getting traffic in the very early days. I did nothing, just a few articles and added SEO bot to it.
Now my time is limited and couldn't focus on SEO. I build in public, so that's the only marketing channel so far. The next step after launching is to double down on SEO and marketing. And the best thing I'm super excited for is to learn new things on this journey.
Sandra: Oh, I'm fully now into SEO as well. I have to tell you, um, I was totally against it at the beginning of Klu.
It took me like, I think, eight months or something like that to get into the story. Um, and it's very true. If you do the good job, if you have a good foundation if you have someone to kind of like explain you, um, or lead you a little bit, it, it does make sense. Um, but it's a long process to see results.
So I'm, I'm, I'm gonna like, definitely pay attention on CD and his journey.
Dan: Do you, do you think this is a bit risky as a. As a marketing. Oh, well, he's also building in public. So it's not just one marketing channel, but would you just go for SEO? No,
Sandra: no, no, for sure. And I like, I know people tend to do that, but like with early stage products.
It's very risky to build your foundation or build your channel with only SEO at the beginning. So, so, you know, I think it's a great channel when it's the right time and you are pretty sure what product is and you kind of have like the right keywords and you know, like, you know, um, where the products will be because that's how you are building the foundation pretty much for it.
Yeah, but yeah,
Dan: yeah, I, I completely agree. I would, depending on the product, I would still start on SEO early, just because of what you said is that it takes a long time to see the results. So if you have the capacity, right, cause that's the question to start early and write about it and try to do some keyword research.
It's great if you, if you do it and then maybe in six months you start seeing the benefits of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not everyone has the capacity to do SEO and other types of marketing channels.
Sandra: Yeah, it wasn't for me, I, as I said, it took me like eight months to, to, to even start with it properly.
Dan: And you also have a lot of media links or backlinks.
Yeah, yeah,
Sandra: yeah. So it's a very nice start actually.
Dan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh my God, Sandra, I'm seeing. So when we started this show, it was pitch dark and I actually thought Sandra is in a recording studio or something like that in a room. And now. It's getting bright, I almost see the sun, and she's actually outside on a balcony, not giving beep.
Sandra: I don't know, can you hear the, like, the ocean sound?
Dan: No, but I can imagine it.
Sandra: It's really nice. It really makes me happy. It's such a weird, weird thing.
Dan: How can you even do the show when you have this in your background?
Sandra: I don't know, I'm going to jump to the pool next, like, wubba.
Dan: How are you going to even do work when you have this in the background?
You know, that, that is my biggest problem with nomading, is you have this amazing beach and sun behind you, and then you just have to say, no, no, no, I'm going to stay on my computer and work today.
Sandra: I think we like a little bit work, a little bit more than the beach.
Dan: And that is a big problem.
Sandra: Yeah. Um, but, but I, I, I kind of like, this is my first, because we came here on Saturday.
So I did just a little bit work during the weekend. And so it's kind of like my first day of an actual like working day. So I'm, I'm really excited to see like how it's going to go.
Dan: Yeah, well, good luck with that. Let me know if I should join you there and, uh, have 20 something degrees instead of minus. I, I, okay, we're going to get to the next one, but this morning I went out and there was a blizzard straight into my face to the point where I couldn't keep my eyes open.
So that's the difference. That is my current status
Sandra: Yeah, I can't um, I can't understand that at all because I have a sunburn on my nose and it feels really nice
Dan: I'm talking to a wall. Okay. Yeah, I want to take the next one anything Nordic
Sandra: Okay, Rohan ??? my hand breaker
My first SAS launch with no audience number one on hacker news for 13 minutes number one Shown, uh, Hacker News all day, 55 signups and counting, 7, 500 plus page views, back to building.
Okay, this is, this is very nice. So, number one on Hacker News, no marketing, no audience, um, very good job, how did you do it? Tell us more.
Dan: So, his post on Hacker News says, I made a site to simplify recommending talented people to others. And the website is called youshouldworkwith.com. And, apparently, It's just showing a project and people really liked it.
That's, the secret is maybe the product itself, huh? Yeah, it seems
Sandra: like, can you open please the, the
Dan: How do links work on Hacker News? I'm such a, I'm such a noob. So I've, instead of copying the link, I've like copied the entire content of the page apparently. Okay, nevermind. So Advance your career for personal recommendations and explore a curated talent base 10x more valuable than LinkedIn.
Oh, very
Sandra: interesting.
Dan: So there is pricing. So you get the basic plan that's free for people who want to get started. And you have, so I imagine you put your profile, not sure what that means. Is it? your LinkedIn or you actually put some info and then you get recommendations on your profile and then you can visit 10 other profiles.
Oh, so I guess you can see other people's profiles too. And then unlimited searches. It's quite an interesting product.
I think maybe it worked well on Hacker News. Because they had the free plan and people could try it.
Sandra: It's an interesting product. Can you click on the use cases? Because, um, I'm trying to figure out what would be the difference between just like checking someone's LinkedIn, um, recommendation section.
Maybe it's about simplifying the
Dan: things. So find the job, hire someone, refer a university friend, recommend the next colleague, recommend your boss. Or highlight a startup founder. Interesting. Okay. I'm, I'm actually quite curious how it is to use this, uh, service. It has dark mode. What does that mean? Okay.
Totally
Sandra: approved then. Perfect. Yeah.
Dan: I agree. I think it's, it's, uh, that's why it. Probably went to number one in hacker news. So did you ever try hacker news?
Sandra: Um, not really not really Unfortunately, I haven't been in that that pool.
Dan: No, I'm too afraid to do it. I don't
Sandra: think even for the For the first product hunt for the first clue product hunt launch.
I did anything there. I don't know
Dan: Klu could have worked there, don't you think?
Sandra: I think so, but I remember reading very nasty comments when Dropbox did their launch there. And I think that post is still live.
Dan: Yeah. Oh, you mean you're afraid it could backfire?
Sandra: I mean, of course I'm not afraid. I went with Klu everywhere. And it backfired and it was good and
Dan: it was bad. Yeah, you even, didn't you even make a post on Reddit where you asked people to roast it or something? Yeah, yeah,
Sandra: yeah.
Dan: That's like, let me help you people. Just, just do what you do best. Here you go.
And
Sandra: actually, I think, uh, it's great because then people feel relaxed. I think it's a great, like, you should do that from time to time, and I still do that sometimes. I do that with the website and I do that with the product because I generally want people's reaction because sometimes when you are in community and when you are in a bubble and when you are only talking with your user, it's also problematic.
So it's a nice idea to have this. outside world where anything can pretty much happened.
Dan: Yeah. How do you take negative feedback when someone tells you,
Sandra: great. Yeah. It depends if it's like a constructive constructive feedback, then it's like, even if it's negative, then it makes total sense. Like then you are missing something or you totally miss something or that platform or like that feedback doesn't doesn't make sense for your product.
So you kind of try to explain to people. Um. But I, I don't appreciate like insults. And I have, and I haven't kind of like, um, I haven't been in that position where someone runs insulting the product that it's like the shittiest idea.
Dan: Well, because it is a good idea, but here's one thing that I see often.
Just, you know, it didn't obviously didn't happen to me just to a friend of mine where you put a paid product and that's the thing on these sites, Hacker News and Reddit too, you put the paid option and then I guarantee that one comment is going to say, Oh, I'm going to do this open source in the weekend for free.
Sandra: Yeah. I had that as well on Reddit. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Dan: So that case in point. So. What, what if you see that and you think, you know, and you have all these people working on it and developers and like really struggling to, to find a solution to this problem. Someone says, Hey, I can do this in a weekend. How do you feel when that happens?
Sandra: The reply was like, please do it. Just please do it. I don't have to do it. Yeah.
Dan: Please do it and tell me how and then I can copy the code and actually
Sandra: Can we make a business out of this? Can we be friends? Like, tell me more. I mean, people are funny and if, if the, if the comment is something that, you know, builds this reaction in you that is laughable, pretty much just do it.
You know, you can make it in two weeks, please do it. And I'll be the first customer.
Dan: Yeah. So. With that said, I think it's time to talk about our sponsor for today.
Sandra: I think you're going to enjoy this one very much, and I would really appreciate if you, Dan, would take this one.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So today's sponsor, I'm proud to announce, is Codesnippets.ai. What is it? Sandra asks.
Sandra What is it, Dan?
Dan Master your code base with the latest AI models. Easily integrate features, bugs, or refactor your code with a full code base context. So you essentially put your Git repository in this, it knows the context, and suggest code. It's, it's a bit like Copilot, that's what people know, but better because it supports all of the open, all the AI models, right?
It's not just whatever, actually don't know what Copilot is using, it's probably proprietary, but this one you can use GPT 3. 5 or GPT 4 or Mixtral or Palm or Capybara or whatever model, you can actually just select it from a model and that's it. It's actually really, really Huge time saver. I mean, we know AI tools and coding.
That's a good match. This one, this one has to be one of the best. So code snippets. ai. Please check it out. Really
Sandra: excited. At this point, I think Stef was talking about it in the previous shows, but I don't see it on the website yet.
Dan: They do, they do have a desktop app. They do, okay. Yeah, they do. Yeah, I wonder why it's not mentioned.
Oh, there it is, see? Yeah, so Windows, Mac, Linux, or VS Code, or even Chrome. I don't know what the Chrome one is. That's interesting. Probably an extension. All right. You want to take the next one?
Sandra: Yes. Um, Mikhail Mike Vasilev,
AI research of your task, um, sets. The plan is to have it follow the context of your existing tasks and projects and give even more relevant resources.
Imagine having an answer solution to your task before even starting it. Hey, this is interesting. This is my space, kind of.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, it's again productivity. This looks like a completely new take on it. Just, okay, I want to, I want to say look at this domain. It's set.do. That's it. S E T dot D O. That's the domain.
That's a nice freaking domain.
Sandra: Um, you guys can't see Dan's face, but he got very, very excited about it. Oh my
Dan: god, this is the best. How do you even get, I mean, dot do, maybe it's, it's a new one. I have Have you ever seen a do website? Anyway, I'm just drooling here over this domain. It looks very cool. You know what's the coolest part?
Is, so, Mike here, building set. do, AI task manager, born to create an innovation enthusiast. I'm gonna follow Mike. I think this is, Awesome. This is such a gem that we found and he has, you know, five likes. Let me link this tweet because this is not, this is not doing justice to what he's building here.
Awesome product, awesome domain. And he looks like a pretty cool people, a person to, to follow. So people go. His
Sandra: handle is morning as well. I I don't know how he stumbled on my timeline and I was like Who is this guy? And then I saw he has like 40 followers and i'm like i'm gonna be the number 50.
Dan: Oh, you're already following that's crazy So I think it is morning So his handle is at do do creator Wow, this is like a whole thing so d o c r E A T O R, @docreator.
Go and check him out. Awesome stuff. Um, this, you see one of these people and then you think, okay, this is going to be thousands of followers soon, I think. Yeah,
Sandra: for sure. For sure. He's doing a really good job.
Dan: All right. Do we still have time for one more or, or are you going to go
Sandra: on the beach? No, no, no.
I love work. Give
Dan: me. Okay. All right. I can take it. By Tommy.
He says. What are you, what is your dream tech job you want to get into? I think I'm doing that already. If I could just work on my product and have, you know, small ish scale where I, where I can call the shots, talk to the users, and build in my own rhythm.
That's my perfect dream job. Okay, this,
Sandra: this could, couldn't be like a better, better ending to Morning Maker show.
Dan: Yeah. What about you, Sandra? What is your dream tech job? It's,
Sandra: it's just what we are doing right now, trying to figure out innovative products, bring them to the market, make people happy. Um, You know, especially with what we are doing here with the discovering new products and discovering new people and trying, testing, building.
Oh, I could do that a whole life and probably one more lifetime.
Dan: What about your dream with the farm and the goat cheese? Oh, that's a
Sandra: That's a perfect exit, you know, acquisition. Um, I'm sick of everything, you know, six months free with my goats and cheese and everything goes really bad. The goats are not listening.
The cheese is not good. Um, you realize. The goats are not listening. Yeah. They are not producing enough.
Dan: They're making too little cheese.
Oh my God, okay, okay. I think we're ready for this week. Thank you everyone for joining. We have so many awesome people today. We have Matthias, Borja, Joao, Charlie, Alex, Danny. Hi everyone. You are awesome for joining us. I can't wait for the show on Friday already. I would like to keep this one going for two hours, but unfortunately, we need to work.
Sandra: Yes, I agree. And, um, um, see you on Friday, I guess. And Friday is a late thing. It's not a morning thing.
Dan: Yeah, we're gonna do 4:30 p. m. That's the Central European time. So I don't know time zones, do the conversion yourself, please. I hope some people can join that, couldn't join this one. So they're obviously not listening now, so we should stop talking about it.
Sandra: But yeah, see you next Friday, Dan, and thank you for a lovely show.
Dan: Thank you so much. Remember to go on MorningMakerShow.com to sign up for the newsletter, see previous episodes or just go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much everyone for joining and talk to you Friday. Bye.
Sandra: Bye.
