Louis Pereira - Why prioritizing fun helps you build and grow viral AI products!

Yeah, I mean, I think building in public, especially for a product that's brand new, like starting 0 to 1, is great because it's the most vulnerable point for a product. And, you know, by extension for a maker as well. And people love seeing that. Like, people like watching other people taking risks in public. People respect that. They enjoy being part of the journey. It's fun for the audience. It's, you know, it's not easy for a maker to go out and say, hey, I'm building this thing. easy to fall flat on your face, right? Like 9 times out of 10, the thing that you're building is just not going to work. And like 2 months later, you're gonna have to go back and say, hey guys, it didn't work, um, and feel, you know, you feel bad about it. But building in public, of course, um, from— for zero-to-one products, would do it every time.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game, take action with a chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor, acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once, selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing for, for whatever reason— lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest— and you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés, and start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, Move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different from every founder facing these crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the become business— the business becomes less valuable or worse, worthless. If you find yourself here, or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. Do you guys have fuzzy thoughts? Or random ideas that you want to just like document? Well, my next guest nailed a product, built a product that actually nails that use case and offers beyond, you know, what you think about. So I'm excited to bring this guest. You know, we had like a, like a brief history, like 4 years ago, we were both part of this community of builders, makers, and I'm so proud to see My next guest actually absolutely smashing it on the internet and killing it everywhere. I see on Twitter his product pops up when I talk about AI or anything else. So writing, thinking. Without further ado, Luis, welcome to the show. How are you feeling, my man?

Thanks, Sharath. Happy to be here. I'm feeling pretty good. Grateful to be on the show. I've seen some pretty big guests in the previous episode. pretty humbled to be among folks like that. So thank you for having me.

You're killing it. You're killing it. I think you've been on many podcasts, if I'm not wrong. But I think, yeah, I had to bring you on because it's an amazing journey to me, watch you from afar as a founder myself. It's inspiring. That's what I can say, because I think for people who don't know, Luis has like a family-owned traditional offline business that he works at in his daytime. And on the night, on the side, you know, he builds this amazing tool called AudioPen. And I'm excited to unpack a lot of things that you've gone through previously, go through day to day, you know, in these days. But right off the bat, Talk to me about Audiopen. How are you feeling it? How are you enjoying the ride so far? I mean, it's been everywhere, like, you know, be it TechCrunch, Fast Company, like so many. I think I saw yesterday Olivia Moore from a16z, she featured you on her thread in the AI marketplace for market cap for the consumer space. So, Yeah, talk to me. How are you feeling about all this attention? How are you handling it? How are you balancing it?

I mean, pretty good. Initially it was, it was quite like thrilling to see it happening because, you know, I've been building stuff for so long and, uh, as you know, like most things don't hit right. Like you just keep building and you build because you like to build, uh, but you're always hoping for something to kind of click. Um, and I've had like smaller clicks in the past, but AudioPen's been the first one that's had, like, you know, very tangible effect on my life, my daily life, my finances, et cetera.

Right.

And it's nice. I mean, I don't take the attention too seriously, at least, like, media-related stuff. Like, I don't reach out to media outlets. I try not to let that become something that excites me because I know I'm prone to get excited by that stuff if I let it. at the end of the day, those are mostly vanity metrics. So I'm trying to keep myself focused on just building the product because that's what I enjoy doing and that's what ultimately sort of keeps users happy and then ends up bringing more users to the product in the long run.

Yeah, in the bio on your website, you've specifically mentioned about the same thing. You know, you have this business to run in Goa, India in the daytime. You're mostly like Bruce Wayne running a family-owned business and Batman solving people's problem who are struggling with putting their thoughts together. But jokes apart, I feel one of the things I really liked in your bio is that you really are focusing on Audiopen in delivering value that people pay for. That is like a trigger to me. And I want to talk about that. Like, it's so hard to kind of balance out when you get so much attention and not deviate and stick to the mission. And I think your mission is like, hey, there are some users paying me money and I have to deliver value, offer for the buck. Yeah. So how do you go by day to day? Like, what is like your mindset? Like, you know, When you get these highs and these lows? I'm sure you have seen lows as well, even though you see a lot of success. So talk to me about the highs and lows.

On a day-to-day basis, honestly, it's not too crazy. Highs and lows maybe come a little more sporadically, mostly because I try not to maintain a super real-time feedback loop. Like, I don't have a live chat on my website. I'm not trying to monitor stats every few seconds. I just have a way for people to email me, which is fairly easy for people to use, and I reply asynchronously by email. So I try not to let a particular day kind of define the direction of the product. So yeah, I mean, the highs and lows don't really impact the product direction as such, but I always have like an ongoing task list that is always ever-extending. And I've just got to sort of prioritize things on that task list. Of course, as time goes by, you know, now that it's been, what, 10, 11 months since the product was born, things get a little more complicated for me to manage because, you know, the product can go in multiple directions. And it becomes harder to sort of follow your gut when you have so many different types of users for a particular product.

Right.

But I'm trying to still sort of figure out ways to do that. One of the ways I do that is I listen to feedback. I, you know, I'm always emailing users myself. I don't have a chatbot on the site that uses AI to reply. I don't have a customer support sort of team or anything. It's just me. But I don't usually act on that feedback immediately unless it's minor feedback. I usually let that sit for a day or two and just, you know, marinate in my head. I write it down maybe, and then I sort of let my gut do the decision-making. So far it's worked out pretty well. I don't know how long that'll go on for. Maybe not forever, most likely not for too long. But for as long as it, you know, I can do that, I'm gonna keep at it.

That's awesome. You seem to be like very calm. You seem to have, you know, a built-in composure that I'm— I've talked to you before. I think we had some chats before you built AudioPen, and you always seem to be very curious. Like, how can I kind of have an approach where I, you know, solve my own curiosity? And even your answers in the last 5, 10 minutes, it's like— You're very composed, you're not distracting. When it comes to feedback, how much of that composure, how much of that balance that helped, again, taking those feedback? I think AudioPen has a wide variety of users, right? It's not just catering one niche. So there are some pros to that because everybody can use it. there are also some cons because you have different opinions. Hey, I want this feature versus that. So how much of that composure plays a role when it comes to building the next thing? You know,

I'm not sure, but like, I don't have a product development background. Like, I've never been a product manager. I've never worked at a tech firm that built products for a living. So I'm sort of making day-to-day decisions almost purely based on what I think is right, and looking at myself as a co-user of a product. So I'm aware of the fact that in the long run, I might make certain decisions for the product that, let's say, a segment or 2 will not be happy with, or, you know, they might not— they would have wanted a little more attention on a different part of the product, let's say. But I'm very cognizant of the fact that I'm doing this as I wouldn't want to call it a hobby, but, you know, for all intents and purposes, it is sort of like a hobby. It's something that I enjoy doing at the side besides my main sort of job at work. And one of the key things is that if it's a hobby, I need to be able to enjoy it, because if I stop enjoying it, then it becomes a job. And I don't want 2 jobs. Like, that's too much work for one person. So because it's a hobby, it has to be something that I like. So whenever I take feedback, I kind of filter it through, you know, hey, would this be something that I would like to see in the product myself? And if yes, then I build it. If not, then I maybe think about it for a little longer. More often than not, I don't build it.

It's so fascinating that you say that it's a hobby when things are blowing up, right? I kind of understand or empathize where you're coming from. you're building this for yourself and you're kind of, you know, I was in that path, you know, a few years ago building my own thing. It is purely, you know, checking my own curiosity. How can I push myself to the edge? What else can I do creatively? And, you know, versus all that, like, you know, but compared to what you're doing right now, it's blowing up, right? You're getting massive attention from one of the largest VC firms like a16z and biggest media publications and whatnot. So what is your endgame here? Like, Luis, Talk to me about what do you want to do?

I genuinely don't know. I would love to just keep building this for as long as I can. I do know that if at some point it gets unsustainable for me to manage and build and becomes too stressful, and the moment it starts being more stress than fun for an extended period of time, I'll consider maybe selling it to someone or hiring a team, one of the two. But I've not reached that point yet where the stress outweighs the fun for, you know, a stretch of time. You know, maybe there are, of course, points, like maybe 1 or 2 days where it's more stressful than fun. But never, never too long. It's nothing I can't manage so far. But when that happens, yeah, I'll either have to hire people to help me or I'll sell the product to someone. I don't know yet. I know I have like attachment issues where I tend to get very attached to products that I build. And I've seen that in the past where I've built multiple products that I should have killed way earlier than I actually killed them. But I've, you know, always had this sort of fondness for them. So I've always wanted to keep them as my babies. And I know that will happen here as well. So maybe I won't sell it. But I might hire 1 or 2 people at some point, if it gets too much for me to handle by myself.

Yeah. So let's go back to the early days. Last year, 2023, the first half of 2023 is when you kind of launched Audiopen. So talk to me about how you built, how you got the idea. So I think you worked on this thing called Nicheless. Congrats on integrating Nicheless to Audiopen, by the way. It feels like a no-brainer thing that you did, which I feel giving people a platform where they can publish to, right? That's amazing. So yeah, talk to me about that transition from Nicheless to Audiopen. And where did you like, felt like, okay, I hit the goal? Like, you know, what was that aha moment for you?

It actually didn't happen instantaneously. Nicheless is still something I run. I still have a bunch of users there. I'm going to keep that on for as long as I can. But Audiopen was quite an accidental creation. I was just messing around with OpenAI's APIs and I built this. I built about 3 or 4 small tools. And I shared them on Twitter. And people seem to like this one the most. So I thought, you know, hey, why not just build it as a fully fledged product? And that's what I did in the next week. And then I got a few paying users from like day one, but a handful, you know, maybe at a very low price point. So nothing that was screaming at me that like, you know, hey, this is a winner. It was like, okay, there's something here. Let's keep building it. But it took me about 2 or 3 weeks to realize that, okay, this is something that I can really focus on because that's when it got some serious traction. I think one, I got lucky. There was one influencer that influenced me, one sort of Twitter influencer, someone with a large following who wrote a thread dedicated to AudioPen somehow. I don't know where he found the product. I've never spoken to this person before. I didn't even follow the person. I never heard of them. But he was kind enough to like write a whole thread on how people could use it. And that, you know, got me a few, I want to say 100 or 1,000, I'm not sure, but got me a large number of users. And that's when things, that cycle kind of kickstarted, that flywheel of new users coming in, seeing the product, liking it, telling more users about it on Twitter, on Reddit, on Facebook, etc. But that only happened about 2 or 3 weeks after the product was born, and that had nothing to do with me. Like, I was just building the product, also flirting with the idea of building other products at the same time. But once that happened, that's when I was like, okay, this is it. Like, I got to figure this out. Let's see where it goes. And I had never been in a position like that before. This was the first product that sort of elicited a reaction like that from people. Although it took a few weeks to happen. But yeah, it goes to show the amount of— like, it goes to show that luck does play a role in anything that happens. So it's not fair to take the credit for everything. Like, you know, maybe some of the other products I built in the past would have done as well if, you know, some person with a big following had retweeted stuff about them. I don't know. But this was one that happened to get that dose of luck. And I'm grateful for that.

So on that topic, I was recently reading Paul Graham's How to Do Great Work, you know, the post he wrote. And he touched upon something like, you know, what you said, which is luck. And I feel, you know, luck is such an abused word. I think serendipity is the right word, I would say. I've experienced serendipity myself and at some scale. I'm not comparing, it's different. Everybody has their own levels. But I feel the fascinating fact is action breeds serendipity. I think in your example, you've tried 3 things and one thing clicked, right? So I think, and before that, what, like there are Read Something Great, Tiny Testimonial, Focus 25. There are like these projects.

Yeah, there would have been at least At least 15, 10 or 15 random things that I've built in the past.

Yeah. And I've built the same, like I have like 15+ projects on the side just randomly out of testing my own curiosity. The action we take results the luck or the outcome that actually—

There are a couple of ways to look at it. Like one thing I always tell people is You have to be doing something that you like in order to get lucky, right? Like, the easiest way to, let's say, win or to roll a 6 on a dice is to just roll the dice many times. You'll end up rolling a 6 at some point. You might not have control over each individual roll, but with enough number of rolls, you'll get it. Yeah. But what you need to figure out is, do you enjoy the game of the dice that you're rolling? Is that the right dice for you? Will you be able to roll 10 in a row? want to keep doing that? Or do you roll it once and be like, this sucks, this life is horrible? If that's the case, you're just not going to roll it 10 times and you're not going to expose yourself to luck or serendipity, however you want to call it. So the key thing is finding out which dice you want to roll and then just having a good time rolling it. Because even if you don't hit 6, you're still having fun. So you keep rolling and then once in a while you'll hit 6.

That's it.

I think the sad part is that now if I have to roll the dice again, I'm not going to hit 6 the first time. I just have to keep rolling, but I'll enjoy it.

See, that's where I am in right now. So I've built this thing, grew it, sold it, had fun, like you said, experienced the highs, man, hopefully inspired a couple of people. Yeah, you definitely inspired me. Appreciate that. Yeah. So learned a lot being a founder and now I'm kind of rolling again and I'm not hitting the 6, but I'm still enjoying. I'm still enjoying.

You got to keep rolling. I mean, if you enjoy it, you just keep rolling. Eventually you'll hit it.

Keep rolling. Yeah. Keep spinning it. Keep taking shots, whatever analogy you prefer. Keep taking like at-bats if you're a fan of baseball. I think that That is consistent. Like, keep taking shots should be consistent. Wins, losses will be inconsistent. I think if you kind of like burn down the fact inside your mind, like stamp it out, I feel you'll have a composure. Like how you're talking to me, you seem to be like, hey, I'm going to roll it again. I don't know what it is. I'm just like, keep rolling, right? Let's talk about Yeah, I love that type of mindset. I think it's very hard to maintain that kind of mindset for a long time.

I mean, it's easier said than done, of course.

Exactly.

It also is sort of worth mentioning that in order to be able to roll that dice multiple times, you have to have a certain amount of privilege where, let's say, the roll of the dice should not determine whether or not you get a roof over your head. or you can put food on your— on the table for your family. That stuff should be taken care of. And I've been fortunate enough to have that, you know, backing because I have a day job that, you know, lets me roll this dice at night. But there are a lot of people, of course, that don't, you know, that are not that fortunate. They don't have the amount of resources and time to kind of play by themselves in the evening, you know, on their internet projects, etc. So I mean, yeah, if there are people that have a job That's probably the best sort of insurance or sort of backup plan you can have in order to be able to roll this dice at night, especially if you have a job and you're a single male like me or a single female as well, someone who doesn't have a family to go back home to and look after, no children, no, you know, that kind of stuff. It's kind of rigged in our favor a little bit.

Right.

So, I mean, yeah, the other folks, it's important for us to recognize that we were privileged to have that. It's not an equal playing field.

Absolutely, man. I think we should not take anything for granted, right? I think there is a sense of, yeah, it's all like we are curious, we want to try different things, but we're also— I think luck is there. I feel like we're born in certain situations. I would call that, it's not adapted luck or adapted serendipity. It's like you've given that, you didn't earn that, right? Like in your case, you have a family-owned business which is covering your bills. In my case, I have a day job, lucky enough to work at certain startups and certain with people. So that is something that is given. So I think we should always recognize that and that'll keep us humble, right? When we're kind of growing or going to the next level, where we come from, it's kind of like a reminder for us. So I love the mindset, Luis. I think I'm rooting for you, like I said many times, online, offline, and all that. But it's fascinating to see that you're talking about certain things that echo a lot to me as well, and hopefully to the audience. So But I want to talk about like the building part. Like, are you like a— if I'm not wrong, if I remember it correctly, you are a non-technical—

Yeah, I build with Bubble. I still can't code. I wish I could, but I can't.

Yeah. Yeah. So talk to me about like, you know, building an AI product. There is like this notion or this excuse that people give to themselves, hey, I'm not a technical person, I can't build AI products. So how did you come up with not just AudioPen? You've said about like 2, 3 products you're playing with at that time. How did you build it? Like, how did you use OpenAI, using Bubble and all that? Like, talk to me about that background process.

Yeah, I mean, I've struggled to learn how to code for years, and I finally gave up trying to teach myself how to code when I discovered Bubble in early 2021. So Jan 2021, I think. And Bubble is the first no-code platform that I've used that's really opened up the possibilities of what I could build. I've played with multiple no-code tools ever since like 2015, 2016, and all of them have been decent at one or two things but been pretty bad at everything else. So whenever you use one of those tools, you have to filter every single idea that you have through that tool's capabilities and try to figure out that, hey, you know, I have this idea. Now step 2 is trying to figure out, okay, can this tool build it for me? And if not, then okay, scrap the idea, move on to another idea, which is an unfortunate place to be for someone who has an idea that they want to build, right? Bubble's the first tool that removed that filter for me where it was, you know, hey, 99% of any idea I have, I can almost certainly build a version of this with Bubble. Even if it's, you know, maybe not the final version, I can definitely build an MVP with Bubble. And in some cases, like for instance with Read Something Great or Audiopen, you can build much more than an MVP. Of course, it's not the fastest thing, or it might not be 10 on 10, you know, on every parameter. But for the things that matter, like it does the job very, very well. And of course, once things sort of scale or once you figure out whether it's working, you know, use Bubble to sort of validate an idea, you can hire people or you can teach yourself how to build it with code. I'm at that stage right now where I'm thinking, you know, hey, should I invest in building this with code, hire people, learn it myself? I don't know, but I'm at that stage at this point. But it's been a year, like thousands of users and no problem.

So what you're saying is— wait, wait, wait. What you're saying is Audiopin is entirely built on Bubble right now?

Yeah, 100%.

Wow.

I don't know how to code. I still can't code. Right. So it's purely Bubble. Yeah.

That's amazing, man. Like, I, so I've used Bubble. I'm a big fan of, you know, Bubble. That's how I built my SaaS tool. Shout out to the first MVP was on Bubble, you know, and then I kind of like found a co-founder and all that. But it's so fascinating to hear that everything that you're doing, even though at this scale, like, you know, handling so many users, it's everything using Bubble. So how are you feeling about it? Like, what is like, when are you thinking about moving to the next step?

Finding— I don't know. See, see, right now I'm at a point where I want to build a native app next. And I've got plenty of offers from people to kind of build it for me. But again, it goes back to the question of, does this become a job versus a hobby? And if it's a hobby, then I want to build it myself. And of course, I failed at teaching myself how to code for years, but I think I'm in a better position now. I would like to believe that I'm in a better position now, at least, to teach myself that. So maybe I'll give it a try and build it myself. If not, in a month or two, I'll probably hire someone to do it for me. But at the moment, it's more of like a philosophical question of whether I want to build this as a hobby or whether I want to build this as a business. I'm going to go with hobby first and see if it works out. And if not, then maybe hire someone and treat it a little bit like a business expense or something of that sort.

And I think you're still bootstrapping. Have you thought about like raising money? Is that like a, like a thing in your mind? Have these—

I've had offers. I've had plenty of offers. But again, goes back to— I mean, I've not had like advanced offers, but I've had multiple DMs from people asking If, you know, I'm raising emails, etc. But like, I don't entertain the question because it's a hobby for me, right? Like, why would I want to make it work? I'm really enjoying it as a hobby. And the moment I take money from someone, not only is it a job for myself, like I'm suddenly working for someone else, which is even worse, with like an additional pressure of, you know, whatever the VC world brings with it, which works for their model, I guess. It's not exactly fun for a founder who's trying to do this purely to have a good time.

I can't digest the fact that in a way I want you to scale things because I think it has such a huge potential, right? Like, think about, like, I don't know, like targeting kids in schools that they can actually convert their you know, doing assignments super fast, or like you can collaborate with or do some things with universities. And there are like n number of use cases that's like plenty out there that you can solve. The scale is big is what I'm kind of like, you know. So I'm kind of digesting the fact that you're still treating it as—

I mean, it's not that I don't want it to reach a larger scale. Like, I want to find channels that let that happen without me having to, let's say, run a cash-burning advertising campaign. Like, for instance, right now, word of mouth is like number one for me. Just yesterday, I had a professor at like a university in the US just give a talk to their students about AudioPen and ask them to write an entire assignment based on AudioPen using AudioPen, which was wild. Like, she sent me emails with a bunch of their responses. Wow. So things like that, I'm happy to let happen by themselves. But besides that, I have an affiliate program as well. where I encourage people to share their affiliate codes with others. So there's a decent amount of growth. Of course, I can maybe supercharge it with ads or, I don't know, campus ambassadors sort of programs if I decide to target students. Haven't really done that yet, but interesting suggestion worth considering.

Yeah, so that's what I think. There is so much scale that that can be achieved is what— so I'm baffled by the fact that you're still treating more of like a side project. So again, there is no right or wrong, right? It's all choice at the end of the day. Whatever makes people happy, they should do that. They should pursue that. Whatever the things that they make things stressful, they should not pursue that. So I think you're on the absolute finest path. I would say the most clear path. I talk to a lot of founders. And I think majority of them are aiming moonshots or aiming something that's way farther to themselves and they feel burned out. But I think you're the first person that comes to my mind with clear clarity mindset. Like, okay, he almost feels like my son who has absolute clarity of what he wants and he stands by that. decision. And I'm so happy that you're at that clarity, but at the same time, I'm baffled by the fact that, hey, there's so much potential to achieve. Anyway, that's for another discussion. But so again, so fascinating. And I think one of the things I also admire about you is there is a sense of natural ability that you do when it comes to building in public, right? whether it is sharing stats, again, going through some lows. I saw a couple of tweets about you not being a designer, figuring that problem in public, taking feedback or asking suggestions. So talk to me about the whole philosophy of doing things in public that helped you become a better maker or a builder or a founder. And what is something that's that bothered you? Like, you know, if I— if you shared something that either like, you know, didn't work out. So how do you kind of like go from there? Like, what are the things that work for you? And what are the things that didn't work for you when you do things in public?

Yeah, I mean, I think building in public, especially for a product that's brand new, like starting zero to one, is great because it's the most vulnerable point for a product. And, you know, by extension for a a maker as well. And people love seeing that. Like, people like watching other people taking risks in public. People respect that. They enjoy being part of the journey. It's fun for the audience. It's not easy for a maker to go out and say, hey, I'm building this thing. Very easy to fall flat on your face, right? Like, 9 times out of 10, the thing that you're building is just not going to work. And 2 months later, you're going to have to go back and say, hey guys, it didn't work, and feel bad about it. But having the guts to go on day one and tell people, hey, you know, I'm doing this, however you do it, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, whatever, is something that other people also appreciate. And that's not something that builders sort of intuitively understand, that you're actually doing it for the people watching. You're not really doing it only for yourself. Of course, you might get some traction out of it. But Even if you do, it's very unlikely that it's going to determine whether the product lives or dies. You might get some initial feedback, maybe not the most useful at all times, because Twitter is not the best way to get feedback. But it's the best place to get early users. And if your target audience lives on Twitter, then like, go for it. Like, that's the best place to do it. But building in public, of course, from zero to one products would do it. every time. Once you've reached that one, I'm not sure, like, that's where some of the downsides come in. And I'm sure you'd be aware of some of that as well. Like, I've had a lot of clones, which can get frustrating and sort of distracting when you're trying to build new features. Because, you know, in the early days, you're building new features with your audience, talking about them, getting feedback. And no one really cares about what you're building. The moment you get clones, like, you're on people's radar. And now building new features is a little more tricky because the moment I say I'm building something, like, I can already see 2, 3 other products building the same thing. And while it, you know, it might not really make a tangible difference to what happens in the end, it affects your mentality quite a bit because then you're like, damn it, you know, I'm putting all this hard thought and effort into figuring this one design problem out and like, in 2 minutes, everyone's copied it, like, what the hell. Right. So now I try to keep my building in public more limited to my email list, which is people that have, you know, bought and used the product. So I kind of share my thought process there instead of sharing it more broadly on Twitter. I don't know if that's good or bad, but at least helps me be less annoyed with people when I'm building. So, and I want to be like in a calm zone. Like, as I said, I'm doing this for fun. So I don't want to get irritated when somebody copies me. So I mean, that's the downside, but that usually only occurs once you've reached 1 and you're going from 1 to N. 0 to 1, there aren't too many downsides because the folks that would want to copy you don't think you have anything worth copying at that point.

Right. And I think you— so I agree. I think 1 to N is where things get a little messy, a little sketchy when you do things in public. And I feel the counterpoint I would ask is, you know, Yes, they can copy, clone, but they can't really clone the love that you're getting right from the product, right? The users, they can't clone the user space. So I feel that is like an asset you already have. I'm just not telling you, I'm just telling you.

I mean, it depends also. Like, for instance, I've had people with fairly large audiences. I wouldn't want to say clone the product, but but build very, very similar products. And they can clone an audience, like they have an audience that loves them. I have a much smaller audience. So they build a feature that I've built. I don't know if they've copied it or not. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But it's entirely possible for them to get more traction on social media from a feature that was, you know, personally sort of thought over and built. So like that stuff is tricky for sure.

Again, I think the world is the pie is big, right? Like they might get the users from their pool, but I feel what I'm saying is kind of, you know, even telling myself and people who are listening, it's a large world, right? You know, it's, there are like n number of users. There are like 8 billion people, you know, on the planet, right? So it's always good to follow your curiosity, which you're already doing. And I think to an extent that taking that as a risk is something that it's a personal choice. And I would take that risk because it kind of, at the end of the day, if you think about it, it is building a character in public. It's writing a story in public. There is no going back. There is no taking turns. It's like going forward in one single philosophy, right? So I feel That is far more important. And to your point, it's fun. There is no strings attached in here, in this example. Like, you know, even the projects I did, who cares? We can, we can do that again, scrap it out, because you know the formula. The formula is putting yourself out transparently, vulnerably, and authentically, like, you know, following your curiosity. And whoever appreciates it, you know, so ignore the haters. And I think, you know, serve the people who who love you. I feel that's, I think, the simplest way to kind of— I wouldn't say it's not a solution per se. It's kind of like a philosophical thing that you keep on telling yourself as a founder. But yeah, so again, I think, have you ever thought of going all in? Like, you know, what do you— did your family know about it? Like, what do they say?

Yeah, I mean, they do. They do, but I have responsibilities towards the family business that are mind to shoulder, so I don't intend on giving those up anytime soon. Yeah, as far as going all in, probably not. No, I'll probably continue doing this as a side business or a side hobby for as long as I can. And given the number of hours in a day that I have to spare for it, At some point it might become more stressful than fun, and that's the point where I'll either hire or sell, but I'll cross that bridge when I reach it. Yeah, also it could just go in the opposite direction where, you know, people just stop using the product and it just becomes no stress and all fun. Maybe a little bit of stress, but the wrong kind of stress. Oh man. So I don't want to count that out. Could go, could go anywhere.

I so wish— I'm personally speaking to myself, right? I don't know about listeners or people who watch this conversation. I so wish that I have your mindset right now. It's like you're so detached, but also you're kind of attached to the fun thing, right? It's really hard. It's freaking hard.

I mean, it's like a difference between playing football with your friends every Saturday versus being a professional footballer. Like, you know, it's easy to look at them playing professional football and say, hey, they're having so much fun. But those guys are slogging at the gym and just running rounds around the ground like 6 days a week. They're not having fun. Like, most of the time they're not. Like, they're struggling eating vegetables and no oil and no sugar just to be able to perform at that level, which is not what I want to do. Like, I want to play football for fun. So That's what I'm doing right now. Like, I know that that's what I can do for the longest time, like till the day I die. I can do that. Not that I can't do the other stuff. Like, maybe I could try, maybe I'd be good at it, maybe I'd suck at it. But I know that I can do this current version for very, very long and I'm enjoying it. So I don't want to make the switch yet.

You don't want to jinx it. I understand. Appreciate the honesty there. Yeah, I think Again, it's all, it's all, uh, different lines of thought, right? You know, uh, I feel you should always listen to, uh, yourself. Whatever the thing that makes you happy, you should do it, right? You know, whatever it is. Like, stress for someone is fun, you know. For someone, it's fun is like stress. Yeah, we're all different. Like, you know, no, no single recipe here. It's just like, you know, I think one single common thing about being a founder, whether you are bootstrapping, VC funding, is that the ability to move forward, like the ability to not give up, the ability to chase one single problem, the ability to serve your customers in the right way, the ability to focus, not distract by bells and whistles. I think those are the abilities that that we all share in common, like builders, whether you don't have a following, you're just starting, you have the same ability is what I believe in. You are A16Z-backed.

Focus is a tough one. Focus is the toughest one, I think, of the lot, especially if you're doing it as a hobby, right? Like every— you probably experience the same thing. Like you always have new ideas that you want to try out and you always feel like, hey, this new idea would be better than the current idea. So I've struggled with focusing on one product. Like, this is the first time that I've done that successfully so far, touch wood. But I've had multiple ideas in the last 6 or 7 months where I was just like, man, I should just build that for fun on the weekend. Yeah, that's difficult to do. It's way harder than it sounds.

Correct. You're right. You're right. I think— but yeah, I think again, you know, you're putting yourself hey, you should bring back yourself, like, okay, let me actually focus on this first. I think that conversation within yourself is what I feel, you know, we all share in common. I'm just curious, what are the ideas you have? Even you still have other, you know, things?

Yeah, I mean, trying to think. The last one I had was like a riff on AudioPen, which is to build like a form-based app. You know how you have form builders, your Tallyforms, for instance. Build that but with audio inputs only. So for instance, I mean, it's a free idea for anyone who wants to try it. I don't know, it probably exists. But like, you can capture very rich information in a voice note. So why do we do feedback forms, or, you know, just general forms as text-based fields, when I could just have a single question with a single button that says, you know, press to talk, and let a user just answer it in whatever language they want, and then have, you know, AI kind of either summarize that in the backend, or pull out the themes or pull out main keywords, etc., etc. And then use that for, you know, next steps. Could be a pretty useful B2B product for people. Really thought I should build that at some point recently. And then I was like, let's just focus. Still an idea on my— Hey.

Hey, hey, you know what? I'll steal it from you.

Go for it, man. Go for it.

It's such an interesting— I think, yeah, now that you're talking to me, you know, I think we're getting into the brainstorming mode. It's such a fascinating thing. Yeah, what you said is absolutely true because so I'm in a phase where I'm actually, you know, I got laid off. I'm applying to a lot of jobs right now, right? And I've applied so many jobs. doing the same thing, entering the same thing, writing the same thing again and again and again. I think from that perspective, from that angle, it felt so like that, you know, the bulb moment when you said about, hey, you can just narrate, you know, a form. So we can probably like call it like audio form or something like that. But I think I really like the idea. It's so on point. I don't know, like, you know, whoever is listening, I think this must have existed already.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure someone's built it. I don't know if this is an idea from a couple of weeks or months ago. Yeah, a month or two back. But yeah, someone must have built it. It's too simple an idea for someone not to have tried.

Absolutely right. It's such a no-brainer thing. Any other things that, hey, you know what, I should have built this? Do you still have that itch in your mind that you want to go back building something new? Or are you being—

Much less now. Like, it's been almost a year for AudioPen. So I was just thinking about this today, actually. Like, pre-AudioPen, I think my brain was properly wired to think of new ideas with almost everything that I saw. Like, anything that I noticed in the world that seemed inefficient or annoying for me to do, my brain would just automatically be like, hey, I should build something that can solve this. And I haven't had that feeling for a few months now, I think, probably because I've been forcing myself to focus on one thing and kind of— Yeah.

Do

you have like a framework or whatever?

Do you have like a framework?

Mine is just spray and pray. Just spray and pray. Like, do whatever, build everything, see what works. and then double down on it. Which is why I don't think we appreciate guys like Steve Jobs or all these guys that build stuff that are visionary visionaries, where they basically tell you what you will want before you want it, and then they go and build it and you actually want it. That is so difficult to do. Like, for us, for me, it's just like build everything, see what people like the best, and then focus on that. Which means that when I go for my next roll of the dice, I'm back at square one. I have to again just throw everything and see what happens. Not a fun thought, but yeah, I mean, I'll enjoy the multiple rolls if I have to.

And when it comes to your idea making, how did you develop that skill of whenever you see something, that's broken and that immediate reaction is going to be like an idea, you know, or the instant like, hey, I want to build this. Like, how did you build? Is there like, you know, something that you practice over time? Like, what was your thought process? You know, before Audiopen, you said like you're wired to it. Like, wired is such a heavy word. So

it would be difficult for me to sort of say exactly why I do that because it's been a while now that I've been doing it for years, so I don't exactly know how it started. But if I were to sort of make up an answer that would make sense to me looking back, I think it would be what you're saying, where it was just more of a habit where I wanted to build stuff and then I was looking for problems in the world. That doesn't go to say that— that doesn't mean that the potential solutions were any good. Right. There are reasons certain inefficiencies exist. There are certain— there are reasons why certain things are annoying to do. And they are very, very bad businesses to solve for, very bad businesses to build around, which is why products that solve those problems don't exist. So yeah, it's not to say that identifying problems equals identifying opportunities that I was well suited to go after. But I think it would have been like a muscle or a habit purely because it's kind of gone away a little bit now that I've been focused on one thing, which kind of maybe proves it's not an innate characteristic of me and more of a practice that I've just forced myself into doing.

Yeah, I think one of the things I love on your website personal website, even Audiopen, is, you know, it kind of ties down to writing, right? Like, writing is thinking, thinking is good, you know, is what you said in recent post I saw about like launching both Niche Lesson, Audiopen. Talk to me about writing. And I think you built a couple of products around it in the past as well.

Yeah.

Why is that such an important thing for you? And how did you, like, over time develop that, you know, ability to write?

Yeah, right. Writing is something I started exploring seriously in 2020. I mean, I've always been a fairly decent, voracious sort of reader, but never been a proper writer. And, you know, during the pandemic, I thought, hey, I can't code. So it was actually fairly simple. I think I read Naval's tweet thread, and it was, if you can't code, then, you know, media is the best bet to build something on the internet. And I couldn't code. So I was like, hey, let's just start with media. Easiest media for me was to write, because I'm not a filmmaker or anything of that sort. So I decided in 2020 that, hey, let me, let me figure out how to write. I joined On Deck's writing program at that point. And that was, that was the first time I took a serious sort of stab at writing on the internet. And it was fascinating because it was so much more difficult than I thought it would be. Everyone just assumes that writing is easy. But it's the exact opposite. It's one of the hardest things I've done, way harder than building a product. You know, I built a newsletter to a small audience of 4,000-5,000 people at that point. But Writing that newsletter every week was proper torture. Like, it was very, very difficult work. Um, but it did help me think, it did help me learn. Um, it feels like a— it feels like sending your brain to the gym. Um, that's the closest analogy that I have. Um, like, in the moment when you're lifting stuff, it never feels good. Uh, but, you know, over time, over a period of, of months or years, you end up seeing that you've gotten better, you've gotten healthier, stronger, etc. Writing is basically just that, but for your brain. And yeah, I've been— I wouldn't say fond of writing, because I think it's hard to say that you're fond of something that is so much work. But I've been fond of what writing— I've been fond of the effect that writing has on my brain after I've written. And so I try to force myself to sort of write more. But like anyone who goes to the gym, you know, you'll know that you have phases where you enjoy it and then you just don't, and then you just don't do it. But yeah, I've been meaning to get back into it for a while now, and I hope, I hope this latest update with AudioPen pushes me in that direction.

Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, also like kind of reduces the pain, right? Because you're narrating And the AI is kind of like giving you a summary and you just edit and push it.

I mean, editing is no simple work either. Editing is the hard part. Like the first draft, Audiopen at least helps me get the first draft out. But then to actually clarify what I want to say probably takes maybe 10x the amount of time editing.

Like, you know, AI has been— last 2 years has been like on the rise. What do you think you want— you're excited about for AI in 2024? Where do you want to like say, hey, this is where Audiopen is going to be? What are the things that you're kind of like, you know, dreaming about or manifesting about that you want to include as, you know, from a product standpoint, at least you as a user, targeting you particularly, you want to write, you know, So nicheless integration is good. What else that you're kind of exploring?

Yeah, I think for now, I think the writing part is the focus. Maybe not the focus yet, but it's one of the aspects that I'm excited about. It's not the main focus for me at the moment, but helping Audiopen become a tool for people to express themselves on the internet, especially people who are not comfortable expressing themselves in the past because they had, let's say, handicaps as far as language was concerned. For instance, people who aren't native speakers of English who want to be able to express their stories or their philosophies or their thoughts on the internet. People who want to maybe talk in different languages from the ones they speak at home. People who know, can't type for whatever reason, you know, prefer using voice commands. I would want Audiopen to become an outlet for those people to share their thoughts with the world, because I feel like that's— at the moment, it's not happening. And I'm speaking from fairly personal experience, because I have people in my own family who speak English very well, but aren't very polished writers of the language, and so have never really felt confident to share what they, you know, what they think with the world or share stories from their lives. It doesn't have to be super complicated. Right. I have people who are using Audiopen to write a book about their life stories, just narrating them one by one, and then collating chapters later from that. So I want to take it in that direction. Because I feel like that's something I want to see in the world, like I want to see exist. I don't know if that's the most lucrative path to go down for the product as far as revenue is concerned. But I think that's the most exciting one for me. If I were to look at the product and say, hey, you know what, what sort of change would I want this product to have in the world in 5 years' time? At the moment, that's the most exciting path for me.

Again, I think going after a noble purpose, I would say, you know, not going after numbers because numbers, you know, will chase when you have like a solid purpose like that. Speaking about those wildest use cases, right? The professor use case was wild. The one you said about like, you know, just narrating their own stories. What is the wildest story you've heard of from Audiopen users that actually like kind of blew your mind?

There are a few I'm trying to recall, but I think there was one that Somebody had a disease where they couldn't use their hands properly. And this was very early on, so it's quite a fond memory of mine. This is one of the first few months of the product, maybe first 3 or 4 months, where they said that it changed their life because they could now talk to their phone and get well-formatted text out. Whereas earlier they could talk, but when you use your voice dictation on your keypad, it's never really accurate punctuations of— you can't— all your filler words and stuff are still there. And AudioPen sort of got rid of that for them. That was a big moment for me. Other than that, on the other side of the spectrum, a lot of lawyers found it very, very useful, which is something that I still don't completely understand. But they've replaced, you know, hours of their assistants sort of being their scribes and writing stuff in shorthand and sort of copying documents, etc., or copying— I don't know, I don't know what— summarizing documents into AudioPen, which was, which was cool. Um, yeah, there was one— there was a guy who used it for, uh, to write his kids' bedtime stories. You can just tell AudioPen to write stuff in the style of, of a bedtime story and then just narrate a very bland vanilla sort of story And Audiopen will make it a little more child-friendly or entertaining, etc. Yeah. And besides that, of course, there are people using it for school assignments. Yeah, all sorts of normal stuff as well.

Oh man, you must have kind of like, you know, I think motivation is a, you know, comes short when it comes to these stories when there is like clear impact that you've made. people's lives, especially the first one was like very, very deep. Uh, someone has a disease and they're just like using audio pen and—

Yeah.

That must have been, um, you know, must have been very impactful. Luis, you know, it's been great conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed knowing you. I'm still— I'm saying that it baffles my mind. So It's kind of like shocking to hear that you're still treating Audiopen as a hobby for whatever reason you have. I still like, you know, I kind of appreciate your honesty there and I'm rooting for you, Luis. I think, you know, whatever you do, I genuinely feel we all should have this sense of calm, composure, balance that when it comes to truly, truly, truly having fun, like you're truly having fun with this product. And not involving yourself in bigger expectations, whether it comes from outside or within yourself. And that mindset is really, I would say it's essential and key to a person's individual growth as a founder. So appreciate you for sharing your story and the thought process and everything. But before we wrap up, do you want to You have any closing thoughts?

No, I mean, just wanted to say thanks for having me on. It's been a fun conversation, as expected. And yeah, I've been following your work for a while and excited to see what you're up to in the near future. Yeah. And talk to you soon again.

Absolutely. Yeah, let's definitely— we should do like a catch up. I have so much to learn from you that I can definitely say at least

vice versa.

At least where I'm coming from right now, I'm in that dry phase. Some things are not working out. I'm again rolling the dice. I'm rolling the dice in multiple ways right now. So definitely would love to do like a catch up and hopefully this conversation inspires more people to chase true fun. Everything else—

Yeah, you just keep rolling, man. It'll eventually hit 6. That's the best. advice that I have at the moment for anyone. And I know that when I have to roll it again, I'm not going to hit 6 the first time, most likely. And I hopefully have the energy and enthusiasm to just keep rolling as well, the same way that you are. So, yeah, I wish you the best as well.

That's all the thing we can do. Roll the dice, whether it is hitting 6 or not. Keep rolling, trying, trying, trying. Trying is, to me, is winning. The actual win will come later. Hope we've kind of inspired you in any way possible. But where should people find you, Lewis?

I'm on Twitter, just my name, Lewis Pereira. That's the easiest place to find me. I'm everywhere by the same name, but Twitter is where I'm most active.

Perfect. Yeah, we'll put all the things in the show notes and definitely do try AudioPen. It's been game-changing for many. And that's a wrap. Stay tuned, stay rolling the dice, and keep doing what you're doing. Cheers, folks.

Cheers. Cheers. Bye-bye.