I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society.
More than a problem
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Hope you're having a good Sunday! (And happy Thanksgiving Weekend if you're Canadian). Here are a few things on my mind... When customers lean inAnother great article from Rob Snyder on what "customer demand" looks and feels like: "You'll hear concepts like 'pain points' and 'problems' that make sense and sound right... But, as you've likely experienced, you can have someone complain about their big problems and pain points, who agree that your product would solve these pain points and problems, and then they don't buy." And later on: "We can think of demand as, first and foremost, the measure of an individual person's force against their status quo. They are trying to change; their force can be measured as strong or weak." In an AI world, what kind of marketing works?Lars Lofgren is one of the smartest people in online marketing. He thinks in the age of AI, there's only one channel left that works. When we’re drowning in an endless sea of lukewarm AI slop... what will we be left with? Real stories from real fucking people. I believe anyone who wants to produce original, insightful content will need to distribute it via influencers. It’ll be the last distribution mechanism for real content What Ruben told me 10 years agoIn 2015, I went for dinner with Ruben Gamez in Portland. At the time, I was in a constant cycle: working hard for 3-6 months, launching something, earning some revenue, and then starting over again. Ruben said, "You've proven you can do these smaller products. Now, I think it would be better for you to work hard on something that really matters." He continued: "Spreading effort over multiple things keeps them stuck in the slow, early stages. Products need both time and focused effort. Pick something with real potential and be deliberate about it." Then he said something that stuck with me: "It's worth it to work harder than you've ever worked for two years if you end up producing a solid business that delivers consistent returns. Something that scales. That's better than the alternative—constantly starting over with small launches." Thoughts? Let me hear them! Cheers, PS: This latest episode of The Panel is good. "How do we help our kids in an age of AI?" |
Justin's newsletter
I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society.
Hey friends, Sometimes AI gets me excited ("wow, look at what we can build now!") and sometimes it gets me scared ("are my kids going to be able to find a job?"). Brian Casel and Justin Jackson are going live at 12:15 pm Pacific today to chat about it: On today's topic list: Sora V2 app OpenAI eating more SaaS categories? Tony Dinh and TypingMind - super inspiring Agent OS 2.0 is out. What's next? Could we do Aaron's "no-devices vision quest?" How do you introduce tech (or entrepreneurship)...
Hope you're having a good Sunday! Here are a few things on my mind... Thoughts on vibe coding and V0.dev I've been experimenting a bunch with Vercel's https://v0.app/ this week. I used it to build a free tool for podcasters: https://art.transistor.fm/ What blows my mind is V0's interface: you prompt it with your vision for how you want something to work and look, and it provides a near-instant feedback loop, showing you what it might look like. I had to get a bunch of thoughts out, so I did a...
Here are a few things I've been contemplating lately: ------- ⛈️ What kills motivation? Aaron Francis wrote about this in his newsletter, and I can’t stop thinking about it: “Maybe, working hard doesn’t lead to burnout, but the lack of hope leads to burnout. If you're working really hard for something that you don't believe will pay off, it's easy to lose motivation. But if you believe that the thing you're working on will have a payoff, the amount of work almost doesn’t matter.” Working on...