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Founder Reality with George Pu. Real talk from a technical founder building AI-powered businesses in the trenches. No highlight reel, no startup theater – just honest insights from someone who codes, ships, and scales.
Every week, George breaks down the messy, unfiltered decisions behind building a bootstrap software company. From saying yes to projects you don't know how to build, to navigating AI hype vs. reality, to the mental models that actually matter for technical founders.
Whether you're a developer thinking about starting a company, a founder scaling your first product, or a technical leader building AI features, this show gives you the frameworks and hard-won lessons you won't find in the startup content circus.
George Pu is a software engineer turned founder building multiple AI-powered businesses. He's bootstrapped companies, shipped products that matter, and learned the hard way what works and what's just noise.
Follow along as he builds in public and shares what's really happening behind the scenes.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
George Pu (00:00.204)
There's a lot of misconceptions in my opinion about learning in our culture. think most of us think that after we are off to colleges and universities, you know, and then after we graduate, we start a job, the period of learning ends. Right. And for some other people learning starts when you're unfortunate, let go from a role and you have to start over and you have to learn a new skill and have transition career. And those are probably the only times where you have to quote unquote learn. Right. And the word learning just has so much stigma to it because it,
It means that you have to spend so much time, you had to get ready. It has to be your new real resolution in order to get ready. But for me on a personal experience, I've somehow learned how to learn, you know, how to learn better and change my mentality better in order to reach the results I really wanted. And, you know, for example, for cooking a years ago, and I just like a year ago, I do not cook at all. I order takeouts almost every day and on language, you know, four months ago, I started learning French and I couldn't speak a word of
French sentence at time and six to 12 months ago, I try to avoid the gym. I thought it was just performance. I just did it for just to simply look good. Today I cook my own meals. I could read more French business newspapers and France 24. And I also work out just about every day. And I personally think that it's not just about willpower. The most important thing I think about how to learn it's honestly just about consistency. And as a founder, as a, as a business owner, you know, for you listeners as well.
I think this is probably the most valuable skill you can develop, and this will make you unstoppable even in an AI first world.
George Pu (01:47.791)
anybody can relate to, which is just like cooking. And if you know how to cook, congratulations, you know, but for me, it's not something I always learn. So moving to college, I would use to order takeouts consistently. The problem is that after finishing college, I continue to do the same. Even if I entered, like I started working for myself as an entrepreneur, I moved away from school and then I still order takeouts excessively, right? Which can be expensive, unhealthy and time consuming.
And there was a period of time where I was just basically telling myself, okay, like I need to stop doing takeouts that much. need to narrow it down significantly. But I think the thought about learning how to cook was actually terrifying to me because no one, because no one basically in my, in my adult life, know, who, my friends, they don't necessarily cook as well. So it's really hard to get them to teach me how to do it. And also I always often find the cookbooks at the bookstores and everywhere else very scary.
Right. And I also think that, you know, by watching YouTube videos, tried a few times and some of the folks who are like doing on YouTube makes it look scary as well. So I focus on the basics and I started over and thinking, okay, how can I actually learn the skill of like making consistent healthy meals, you know, for every meal. And also want every meal that I make to be consistently different so that, you know, I don't repeat a same recipe at least for a few months. So that was like the challenge as well. So we do.
With all transparency, you know, I started by doing something that some of you might do. I started doing, hollow fresh. I started ordering chef's plate and I started getting those milk kits delivered to me. Right. And it was like experience of reading the milk kits, reading the menus and starting to make those different meals, even though, you know, it may be a bit pricey, even though, you it might not capture the full cooking experience, but that has worked for me till this day. And, you know, I shouldn't make it that big of a deal, but I've been.
Really fortunate a few weeks ago to have started dropping a hollow fresh and starting buying my own food and be able to use the knowledge I've learned from, you know, cooking hollow fresh to be making real food. Right. And I was intimidated at first, but once I get adjusted, was like, is easy. This is not something I thought it would be so hard. And just by doing cooking every single day of doing hollow fresh for over a couple of months. Now I have the confidence now to basically drop hollow fresh and be able to cook something, you know, new things every single day.
George Pu (04:06.833)
researching the recipes, making the meals and all that. So that's something I think every one of us can relate to, which is cooking. Right. I started off something simple and focused on the fundamentals and I practiced consistently rather than trying to master everything. Right. I don't know about how to make any specific cuisines. was just, it was just basically about survival, about being healthy and that succeeded. And also I'm not trying to just go from zero to one and be a world-class master chef. Right. And also I built from previous experiences.
Each hollow fresh dish actually taught me about transferable skills, about what more dishes I can make. And eventually making mistakes is part of the progress. I burn plates, I burn pots, I've added too much salt, I add too little salt and I overcook the potatoes and all that. But I never let that deter me. And those are not the obstacles. Those are the path forward. So I think on a parallel basis as founders and we go in a batch of business world, we face new challenges constantly as well.
The ability to basically quickly acquire new skills and that is becoming your new competitive advantage. And that's why I'm coming to realize that all these different things about learning, it always comes to a similar pattern, right? For example, learning cooking, for example, for me, learning a new language about learning French, for me about having a new physique and having a new workout routine every single day for the week. And also technical frameworks, right? Learning Astro, learning Next.js and learning those front-end frameworks.
or backend frameworks, they all have the similar patterns about learning as I'm digging through it more. I always start with the fundamentals. I don't go for advanced techniques, right? I don't just try to dig through everything that I don't know about and overwhelm myself. I always start with something that's super, super simple. So example is that I actually use Duolingo for learning French. know Duolingo is like, people always wonder, is it actually work? You know, does it actually work? And I think it worked for me in a sense of that.
It prompts me to actually spend at least five to 10 minutes every single day to learn about it. And I think that is, I think that's making me more consistent. And as I got more comfortable around the language, I started leaving Duolingo and going to different other platforms. Right. So for example, I'm researching like newspapers and applications and, um, you know, even watching some public broadcasting radios and TV on YouTube, right. That's also the way I learned is that you build a really strong fundamental.
George Pu (06:31.175)
Right. By spending, I don't know, like an hour on weekends, half an hour weekends, right. You spend 10 minutes, five minutes a day. Everyone can take that amount of time and each skill and each level that you learned today, you just make sure today I learned more than yesterday or today I've learned more enough than yesterday. So every day you're making progress. And I think that is the strong part about learning the, just remove the intimidation that disappears by you being consistent and starting with small.
And continue doing the same thing every single day, right? Or most of the days. for me, coming back again, I thought about learning. I really thought about learning a new language, researched all the classes that's available near my house. And I was just about to enroll myself and my mom talked me out of it. I really thought I need to be in French immersion, right? To take formal classes. And I really thought it would take at least years for me to actually start reading and comprehending anything that's useful.
And I also thought, it's just like, I don't know, I still believe that to this day that being an adult make learning a new language a lot harder. Right? So those are all the excuses that's been in my head. It's just because I learned something, I read something, I read it on YouTube. I started believing it. But as you can see, just by reading and listening and speaking with Duolingo and app, you know, for 10 to 20 minutes, just daily, I barely miss my streak. guess, you know, I, I perhaps have about five misses in the past 160 days. So.
You know, so I've obviously been learning quite a lot and I focus on business and finance vocabulary when I'm off Duolingo related to my interest. Obviously, if you're interested in reading a certain thing, make it your interest to read something that's more relevant to your interest. And I think that also has helped me a lot because I'm more interested in like politics, business and finance. So I try to read more offline about these different things off the Duolingo app is what meant. Right. And I also try speak with the AI, know, ChachiPD has AI mode, Claw has it now.
Gemini has announced, there's like even three options for you to try. So practice speaking, even though it feels awkward and imperfect, right? We all start somewhere. And I think I have that confidence of basically just being confident to fail. Right? So, you know, if I go to Paris, I'll be talking in French, just that, just even though I'm basically having a huge Anglophone accent, I think that's still okay. You know, so for now, for a few months of consistent learning, I am surprised at the progress I'm making because I read I'm not spending that much time.
George Pu (08:56.404)
I can understand a lot of business articles with minimal dictionary use. actually enjoy the daily learning ritual. Sometimes I do it in the morning, sometimes I do it in the evening, sometimes during afternoon, know, sometimes during commute, most of the time I actually do it in commute. So I gain enough confidence to actually start conversations. And just by learning French consistently, which is not something I'm super, super clinical passionate about, I gaining confidence enough to realize that learning can actually be fun and learning is not work. Right. And for us as founders,
international expansions or, you new product expansions, or you're jumping from one front end framework to another. Like for us, we jump from React to Next.js, from Next.js to Roo, from Voo to basically now Astro. We have so many different frameworks that we're trying to jump. And as a founder, I always thought about this in a sense that, you know, like, Oh, do I actually have to spend so much time learning a not yet another framework? Is it going to take like 30 days or 60 days, 90 days of my time?
And then what do we have to jump to another framework? Right? So I, as again, I come to make excuses, just like I was learning French. I start making excuses, but as I actually spend time to actually learn it, I realized the pattern, the beginning of learning is always the hardest. The first day is always the hardest because you always find excuses of how it's not going to work. Right? Same goes for my fitness and health. Like I said, in previous episodes, I always thought you need to have a really well put out plan.
And you need to have basically like a fitness advisor and you can keep track of every meal. You have complex workout plans. And all because I read this book, bigger, leaner, stronger, that actually talked about everything can actually be simple. We don't have to run around like maniacs about tracking our meals and workouts and, know, being so strict about ourselves and not eating anything. In fact, the book said you can eat freely, right? So it's not until I read that book, I realized how working out and keeping fit and keep consistent.
It's the most important thing. for working out, I personally think the workout part itself is probably like 30, 40%. And the remaining 60%, I think is about diet and also about consistency. So I will give consistency probably 50 % and 20 % for diet, 30 % for like just working out. know, consistency means everything. If you go consistently and you take care of everything, of course you're going to be fit. There's no reason why you shouldn't, right? Go around and look at all the people that have achieved fitness.
George Pu (11:17.032)
in their lives is not because they're generating and have better genes or anything. And just because they have put more time in the gym and they have put more time on their body working out than you. Right. And that's something I've learned in Swap. I never thought I could be quote unquote fit, but I am on that journey now I'm getting more into it. And as a busy founder, I want you to know that if I can do all those things, you can as well, right? There's no excuse not to do it. If this is something that you really want to achieve, you know, do it by all means do it. And I think.
My learning approach has slowly became that I started with simple and repeatable routines I can maintain. so for example, with jogging, started jogging I think in 2022 when I saw, when I saw, you know, my roommate was jogging at a time. And the funny thing is I started jogging and after 300, 400 meters, I started to breathing. started losing my own breath. started like making a scene out of it, you know, at the Harbor front. I definitely was.
very bad at jogging, have to say, I very bad at running. So I gave myself a goal. say every weekend, George, you go out there and you run and you give yourself a run and then you can take breaks if you do, but at least try to make it like one kilometers or two kilometers each time. So that was something I did repeatably and continuously. And I try, I started doing it every weekend on summer slowly and slowly a few summers run. I slowly realized I can do two kilometers without breath without like
losing my breath and having to catch up and that started to become three, right? I started to become four and now I basically try to run five to six kilometers. I still take breaks, but those are really, really short. So really consistency, think is the, is the path forward and focusing on consistency over intensity. I started by doing 300 meters of runs. think any one of you guys listening can probably do the same. So we can all choose something that's like consistent and gradual progression and yes, gradual progression, right? Do gradual progression over dramatic changes.
Oh, today I did like 500 meters tomorrow. I'm going to five, five kilometers. That's not something that's like useful. think we also need to really set goals that are aligned with a realistic expectation. So focus on goals that really motivates you, whether that's personal goals or business goals, you know, it's like, is it about energy? Is it about focus? Is it about longevity? Find the goals that really motivates you and execute just by putting up 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes every day, just on doing those things.
George Pu (13:37.155)
I think can actually help you achieve those goals faster. And I think the business impact of having those consistencies in my personal life has really helped me make better decisions from improve physical health. So for example, this week, unfortunately had a deadline to run, so I couldn't sleep as much. So I think my average sleep this week was five hours and 30 minutes. And it's not ideal obviously, and it's much shorter than where it used to be.
But however, I'm not freaking out about it. I'm not feeling super hard about it. think my body was able to carry it through and just acting, you know, just basically behaving in normal. And that is one of the benefits that you have from having a good physical health. makes you make better decisions. It makes you more calm and it makes you genuinely equipped to do a lot better. And I think that decision making is definitely real. So take that from me. Second is you have more energy and for demanding founder responsibilities, right? So I obviously run two companies.
And there are many things going on that always requires my attention. I think this has helped me quite a lot. I'm basically managing my energy levels and not just like flicking out, not burning out. think it's super important. also being calm also allowed me to basically think a lot more long-term about maintaining performance over decades. So this is not something I think about just because, you know, I want to be fit just because I want to impress somebody or I want to like look really good on the streets or whatever like that.
I think for me, it's more about keeping it healthy, keeping it good. And also for everything, you know, I try to have a personal goal and if possible, you know, I have a business goal to it. Right. So that was the personal side, you know, on the business side, there's also some new mindsets I want to share about how I learn different frameworks. I haven't really been coding as much in the past few years, and I have to be like really honest about it. I basically delegate all the actual coding stuff to my developers. And I think personally, I've been focusing more on.
stories where you can say, George, you're basically like PM you're basically a technical PM. So I do. Yes. I, I, I admit, I think I was, and I do read the code commits. I do read the code that the developers write, but I think as time go by, it's very easy to just like lose track of that as the founder. Right. So I think personally, I, I have just tweeted, I think last week, I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn some really important frameworks starting with next JS, and then I'm going to learn Astro.
George Pu (15:58.426)
So those are two languages that I'll be learning on the front end side, because I always brush it off. you know, AI is coming along and it's going to write good code. And that is not, obviously on learning that, my learning lessons that I tried by coding, it didn't work out. then, you know, I realized that I shouldn't just use that as an excuse of law, learning how to code and really putting myself focused on learning these different frameworks. And the reason I gave myself is that think ahead, right. For the next 10 years, I think.
I'm going to spend a lot of my time doing development or, basically maintaining, overseeing my developers for training development work. So I think the important thing is I'm going to spend quite a lot of my time, you know, just working on this, right. And if I don't understand the code itself, I don't understand the framework itself. That's like flying a plane blind.
Right. With like without any glasses on without any prescriptions when you're and you're flying a plane. And I think that is super, super dangerous. And there are two benefits I can see immediately from me taking the time considering to learn about Astro and XGS is that first I will save a lot of time because I don't have to spend as much time doing code reviews. And when my engineers run to me with questions, I don't have to dispute that to tell you, Oh, what do you think on this technical issue? I can actually use my personal knowledge to actually tell my engineers what I think.
So I save a lot of time. And second, you have to actually be mastery or at least have a really, really good understanding of your domain subject to let AI do a better job than you. For example, I use AI a lot for brainstorming. As I said, it does really well for brainstorming. And I think the reason why it does well is I know exactly what's not going to work. And I don't just tell AI, yes, yes, this is exactly right. Right. And for example, like this morning, I was brainstorming something. I tell AI to basically change seven different things, seven times.
because I don't think that's going to work out. see, but the problem is I don't do the same thing with front end frameworks. I do the same thing with backend frameworks or coding in general. I just take whatever AI writes, right? And if you're a technical founder, understand that that's not how it works. You shouldn't do that. So having realized that I understood that each framework actually teaches patterns and I can use that for business decisions. And I can understand technical trade-offs and how to improve our product strategy.
George Pu (18:10.787)
Staying technical while running companies creates a competitive advantage compared to other founders who are perhaps competing with me who are not technical. And I think that is a significant part of my realization. You know, today, especially markets changing changes faster than ever. We have AI, we have people building different modes, have modes that are losing grounds, right? And we have customer expectations as evolving very quickly. We have new tools, technologies and emerging monthly.
And we have the biggest AI companies and big tech always coming from unexpected directions and wiping out startup companies. So as a founder, I realized that I could not delegate everything and I have to make decisions for almost all the core decisions for the company. And I think that includes everything I have to learn. And with that being said, I think if I do not learn and I try to like just use asking AI to do something for the domain, I'm not perfectly aware of, I think that is creating future issues.
That's going to buy me in the back. And the alternative is that if you're a founder who maintain learning for as long as you can, if you make learning your number one goal, if you don't know something, you actually take it, make the time and learn it. Right. You can actually spot opportunities that other people miss and you can adapt to opportunities that market changes faster. If something comes along, you can learn new things and you can adapt to it. And you can also make informed decisions about new technologies. Right.
Which of those are hyped and which are those are not hyped. Only someone who understands and able to learn can do faster, you know, and that's something to be said when Wall Street analysts are like, I don't know what is this or Wall Street people on CNBC is, I don't know. What is this new framework in tech? I don't understand. You understand. And that can make you maintain relevance in those industries move much faster, right? And be more successful as a business person. And I also think, each skill that you are going to learn reinforces others.
For example, just by learning French every day on Duolingo for the past couple of months, I've maybe realized that the only time I have to give it is just 10 to 20 minutes every day. So now I'm spending that exact principle on learning technical frameworks on the front end side. So everything is kind of connected. think as you were learning one new thing, just one new thing, you're going to learn from that learning experience and you'll be able to use that on experience into something else very, very easily. And that is.
George Pu (20:28.074)
framework that I'm using. So if you can take about 10 to 20 minutes, think about also why you're not learning something that you really, really want to learn and then come back and try to do it, spend at least another 10, 20 minutes every single day by doing it. Right. And I think that's something that will make a significant difference in your journey. You'll understand a lot more things. You'll be able to do things that you don't think you are able to do in the past. Right. And also having to learn.
versus having to delegate, right? So obviously learn the things that you have real passion about. I personally don't believe you can learn something you have no passion about. And I think that's super, super, super important. Everything I'm learning, for example, a few years ago, just maybe even like a year ago, I didn't think learning the XJS and Astro is going to be important for my business. So if I had that belief, there's no way I'm going to learn it really well because I don't have any drive or motivation to do it, right? It's only when I have a reason to look up to
I have the motivation and then I actually started doing it. Right. And that's the beautiful part. So for you as well, I'll ask, please, you know, think about only learn something that you're capable of learning. And also you're very motivated to learn, you know, that's something I think I will keep doing for the rest of my life. And I hope that I can keep learning journey the same. I do it, if I become an expert for all the things I just taught you guys about, I'm sure I'll also find out some other things I'll be learning.
To conclude on this episode, think learning how to learn is the most valuable business skill because it makes all the other skills accessible, right? Just by learning how to learn in a rapidly changing, yeah, for instance, environment where everything around us is changing so fast and the world is changing, right? As well. And we sometimes feel like we're out of breath. Your ability in this environment to acquire new capabilities, it determines your company's survival and growth. And also most importantly, your personal growth, right? Pick on the skill.
that can improve yourself or can improve your business. Apply the framework of starting with 10 to 20 minutes daily and focusing on immediate application instead of just learning the theories and connecting that to your immediate business goals. And of course, at the end, maintaining consistency over intensity. And I think your business will face challenges, of course, in the future that you might not expect, but with this skill of learning, you're able to thrive and quickly acquire whatever skill is at your learning. It's not just about personal development, in my opinion.
George Pu (22:53.277)
I think it's a real business strategy. And in 10 years, everything in our lives will probably look a lot more different and there'll be new expectations from new customers, from the investors or from new people in your life. Right. And the question is about, it's not about whether or not you do need new skills. It's about whether or not you'll be able to learn them. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Founder Reality. I'm your host George Poo. As always, if you have any thoughts about learning.
or if you have anything about anything you agree or disagree about this episode, please feel free to write to me at the George Poo on Twitter. I'm also for all the show notes, transcripts, summaries, videos, and also my other blog posts that I don't post here on the podcast. You can see all of that at founderreality.com. As always, this is George. I'll see you next time.