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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)
Hello and welcome back to this week's founder rally podcast. I'm your host George PU And this week, I think three thing has been, you know, rallying and being in my head this week. you know, not new ideas. I've been thinking about them, chewing on them for about a few weeks, but this week, I think they click in a way that actually changed how I think and how I run things. So instead of the normal format, I want to talk to you about these three thoughts, how they're connected, how they changed the way I think. And even though they might not.
seem like they're connected all at first. So without further ado, let's go.
So the first thought is like, you know, why LinkedIn makes me cringe and what I got missing from being that cringe as well. So why I was wrong about it as well. So of course, if you know me, you know, the problem I see is like, I've talked about on the show for many times how I despises a lot of the corporate talks, a lot of self-promotional talks on LinkedIn. And of course, oftentimes I'm right. Every time I do, you know, open LinkedIn, I see the same thing. I see self-promotional selfies. see...
people posting about how they crushed the meeting. You know, I have like random motivational quotes over sunset photos, a coffee shop, you know, whatever fake vulnerability, right. And everything. So I'm sure if you use the platform, you've seen as well, it's not a problem with the platform, but it is a theme of the platform. Right. And, know, people say, I failed 47 times before I succeeded. And there's clearly like a lot of formulas out there, to get engagement. think people are using it just to get a lot of hundreds of likes, thousands of likes.
And here's the thing, obviously it works, right? We see people in our networks and we see people who not in our networks, but our networks have liked it. Those posts get hundreds of thousands of likes because people say the right things, use the right templates and they hit the right emotional buttons. And that is all fine for their promotional purposes. But for me, I only just felt cringe. And if cringe is not because I don't like the person, but because I can't tell.
If it's real or not. oftentimes I can tell it's not real. It's a performance. It's performance theater, right? That's what LinkedIn has been for me for a very long time. And I think as humans, like we're actually very good. Not just me. think all of us in general are very good at spotting this stuff. You know, I used to, I used to hear that people at a white combinator are really good BS detectors and they can just smell something when it's like they can know something's not true. And I think actually a lot of us are actually like that.
we think, we observe and we know what is true, what is authentic and what is not. That's why we can tell if an actor is good or not, right? If he can sell us that or not, the scene. And when something is not authentic around us, you smell it. Even though it's just like text in a photo, you can see it and we might not be consciously knowing it, but we deeply can feel it. So that's one extreme, right? People who perform constantly, but who are not actually building something real. So that is the one extreme that I really hate.
because I realized those people are just like posting online. They're not doing anything other than posting and performing. So it's a lot of performance. So let's say a hundred percent performance and near 0 % of actual building something real. However, I think that's something I've been saying for a long time, but here's my mistake. Here's why, what I missed up. I personally have in the past couple of years, one to the
the opposite for years and almost years. I meant years, right? Because as you all know, I started my journey building a startup in 2019 and for years I did not post anything. I didn't post on Twitter. didn't post on LinkedIn. I didn't post anywhere. I was like grinding in silence. I was building some Portract. I was building ANC, but I wasn't telling anyone, right? Why? Because, you know, one of our competitors was very notorious about keeping secrets to themselves and they're very afraid that if they share the work that they're doing, if they share their idea,
Everyone else will be copying them. there's a lot of those. There were a lot of things that our competitor, I simply did, including hiding their actual name, hiding their training, hiding the company name and using the company name only with a blank webpage to hire people. And if you will got hired as naturally know what they're working on. So they go to the extremes of hiding the idea, but eventually it turns out the idea is just like very simple. There's nothing, there's nothing crazy about the idea. It's not a, it's not groundbreaking idea. It's just an idea.
Right. And I mean, I got drawn into that mindset of our competitor because I, you know, back in the days, I still study my competitors, when I was in college. So I made a mistake obviously, but I believed just like him that we need to protect our secrets by staying quiet. So I stayed quiet as well. I was afraid genuinely that someone's going to come and share our ideas. But the thing about doing these things for the past couple of years, it's like the results have been zero feedback.
There's no community as well. So there's no community. There's no feedback. No one knew what we were building, right. Other than a few handful people. So I was doing great work in my opinion, but I was, it feels like I was shouting in empty room. was broadcasting into the room. Well, whereas I was seeing actually founders and builders who are actually building public online for ideas that can even be like even more easy to be copied in us. Right. And of course, like that was back in the day, even now, like nowadays, if you have an idea, if you even keep it secret,
People are going to find out people are going to try doing it. Idea itself is never the answer to anything. So that was a mistake I made. I think the actual answer is that the founders are actually respected. I have a lot of respect. They actually do both. They do post that what they're building, they bring up constant updates and not just updates from the company or from the product. They do post that, but they also share a little bit more authentic self about what they think on certain topics, what they think about this and that, and what they think about frameworks, right?
And that's the actual progress of what they're making and thoughts that they're having. So those are not performance. think a few founders I do follow on LinkedIn quite often. Those are the founders that are posting exact learning moments that they have. And it turns out those learning moments become my learning moments as well. I learn new tools. I learn new frameworks, I learn new things that because of those founders posted. So those are actual substance. And I realized that, you know, by not posting anything was actually a mistake that I made and you need both. You need, you know,
You know, you need both and it doesn't have to be 50-50. So performance on one hand and also like posting a building on the other hand, you don't, cannot go too extreme and go to one with a hundred percent or the other one with a hundred percent and give the other zero. So I'm not saying you should be 50-50, but for me, it's actually like 70 % of actually building stuff, but 30 % working on marketing as a founder and sharing exactly what I'm building. So.
You had to find your number as well. Right. So if you're like a more marketable person, you enjoy marketing, you enjoy sharing your story, you enjoy seeing the growth numbers from your dashboards. So obviously you can allocate more of a percentage on working on telling your story and marketing, especially your own story. And unless I'm on building, maybe you can delegate that to a technical co-founder to a product manager or to a product team. And it really depends on what each person is better good at. Right. So for the longest time, I gave myself the excuse that I'm not a marketing person. hate marketing.
And I think for the long, for the longest time, I realized the reason why I hated marketing is because I don't really understand exactly how it works. thought marketing includes those like constant dashboards and sending customers emails. don't really want shouting into a wall into constant, like a mountain on social media. So it turns out it's not like that. It's nothing like that, right? Marketing should and could be simple and you just have to find what you're really good at and maybe double down on that. And then, you know, give the other part a little bit less, but also.
Importance, right? So as I said, don't go 100 % on one thing and 0 % on the other thing You'll always have to find the exact balance. So help do a simple test, here's how you know if you're doing it, right? Right if you disappear from the internet tomorrow will people actually miss the value and the frameworks that you're actually creating or Will they just notice the silence? Will they just notice? Oh, this person is not posting anymore, So that's a good test you can do to see if you're actually posting enough
For example, if they do miss the value, the insights, tools, ideas, you're actually good, right? So you're actually posting something valuable and you actually need to double down and keep doing more of that. However, if you just notice, oh, after a while, like not even right away, they notice after a while, oh, this person has stopped posting. Right. And this person hasn't been posting for a while. So that is performance mode, right? I personally notice if someone hasn't been posting, but that is months and months after. And that's the reason I probably don't even really miss the content this person created.
However, for the few founders I talk about on LinkedIn, where I really enjoy the content, if they haven't been posting even for a week, I will be grinding on the wall and I'm wondering, why haven't they been posting? Right. It's just too busy or why not? Because I really hope this person will come back and post. So I think for most founders, finding the balance is truly important. Don't go to the extreme. And of course, as I know, it's like, don't really think your product is idea is that luxurious or
or you're afraid of being stolen. In the AI era, I think it truly is just like the early internet era. You can build any idea, right? Like when Uber came out, there were like 10 different other brands or 50 other different brands, just like Uber. But when Uber existed, they all had the same idea, right? And it's not even because Uber is the earliest market that the reason that it won, right? Same goes for many different startups. doesn't matter the idea. Execution is the key and finding the right customers is a key as well. So that's the first thought. And, you know, my second thought is that
I personally think most people are measuring the wrong thing. And I've been thinking about this for a while, like about how you actually measure things in your life matter a lot about where you ended up being. Right. For example, for myself, I think three years ago, my main goal was very simple. I just kept thinking about like, how much money can I raise? How much capital have I committed? Right. I was raising for a simple direct. How much do we have a lock in the bank? Are we doing a seed round? Are we doing a pre-seed? Are we doing a series A? how much valuation do we have in each one? One of those rounds. And when do we do a series A? When do we do series B?
So for the longest time that was literally my noise star. And that's the number I check on every day. And also checking in if I can reach those numbers every single day. And every time I open my LinkedIn, I'll see other founders getting funded millions of dollars. And I'll be super jealous and think about, okay, I should be doing the same. Right. That was what I chose to measure myself as a founder. And of course it was completely wrong because I was measuring someone else's version of success, not mine.
Right. And I also, another story is about people around me. have friends who are brilliant engineers. They're making $200,000, 150, 300 at Google, different companies. They're really smart people, but they have all told me they have thought about looking at like starting a company, but they think they always think it's too risky. I can lose my money. can lose my job. can lose everything I have just by switching. And they're right. by looking at me, right. So for the first three years or four years, I barely made anything.
I work more than 40 hours a week on Simple Direct while also working full time and going to school. Obviously I wasn't even breaking even. I wasn't paying myself a livable wage at a time. Whereas my friends who are doing co-op internships, who also graduated are making way more money by just showing up at their jobs. But here is the problem that our colleague, my, my friends are missing, which is basically the matrix do plateau at the end.
So for example, when you just quit and join Google, you become 150 K and in a few years it becomes 300 K and maybe in a few other more years it becomes 500 K. So over 10 years, 15 years, that's what it becomes. 500 K 600 K whatever. Then it stops, right? Office politics, promotions, cost of living adjustments. The trajectory flattens out. doesn't, it's not a breakout trajectory. is linear, literally linear, and it doesn't change on a yearly basis. However, as an entrepreneur, yes, it is risky.
And a lot of us do not make our business, our business, our our make it. However, once you reach the breakout point and I don't have to be a tech business at all. can be any business. Once you hit that breakout point, once things starts working, the math is completely different, right? You can make millions annually. You can make tens of millions annually and you control the expenses. You keep what's left. Right. And with AI, like I said, always here, it's a very different game, you know,
So another example I have in the matrix is like basically creating content for simple direct. Right. And I, I will use my example for us. will use like DHH, which is like a founder of base camp, which is like a very successful project management company. They have a lot of followers. have, you know, a successful business generating revenue. So they recently, I think a few years ago, switched to another block. And for the first six months, he was saying that he feels like he was screaming into the void. He was really bothered and he checks the numbers of how many people are reading his block every time.
And he was very bothered because nobody was reading and he felt like there was no engagement. was zero growth and he feels they were super frustrating. And he was measuring how many people see my posts on my posts today, how many followers they get a week. Right. And when I heard that I was like very, I, feel that as well, you know, in my personal content journey with everything, I spent some time just basically measuring.
The numbers checking the numbers, see how, how many people just see today exactly like him, how many followers again today, how many, how much the content gain like or not like today. Right. So that matrix makes people quit very quickly because the number does plateau. So the number, the thing about number is even for the podcast, even for the blog posts, the number in the first few weeks or even first few months are not going to work and not, not going to look pretty.
It doesn't mean that what you were making doesn't make sense. It applies to almost every podcast, right? Unless you have an existing millions of followers on certain platforms, you can promote traffic to your podcast, to your blog or to your social media platforms. However, it's not the same for everybody. And for a lot of people, if you listen to what they have been saying is that most people actually don't find success in content creation until the end of year one or for some until the end of year two. There's no break up about until then.
So a few months of that, like even year, right? A plateau for people. It's a hard pill to swallow. Most people are just spending time and not getting anything in return and they quit. And like I said, that's why most podcasts quit at episode 20. 60 % of podcasts, think, or 70 % of podcasts, podcasters quit at episode 20 and the rest doesn't even do anymore. So, and that is a reason when people see that, oh, you know what I'm creating is not making sense. They doubt themselves, right? And they quit.
So if you zoom out, if you look at 12 months windows, instead of the daily dopamine hits by checking your matrix, you can see that actually your numbers are working. Right. So, and that's a question, you know, that's a problem. I know, coming back to another thing about matrix, about money, I personally know people who measure their entire life around money. Every decision is about how much money can I make and every decision is about linear decisions. Right. If I do task a, I'll get
I'll get paid B if I do C I get paid Y. So every hour of work equals to every hour of pay. So that is a lot of people's way of measuring money and measuring how to make money, However, unfortunate truth is that that is employee way of thinking, employment way of thinking. You're trading your time on a straight line. For wealthier people, especially for entrepreneurs, they think differently. They think, how does this compound? how can I make money while I'm sleeping? Am I building freedom or am I just wasting my time?
Spending time, trading time for money, like an employee, right? So the same questions about money, it's completely different metrics. So I've been thinking about this quite a lot. I realized that conclusion is basically that the metrics that you choose determines where you eventually end up. If you choose the wrong metrics, eventually you will plateau. If you choose the right metrics, eventually you'll compound. Right. And there's no right or wrong answer, but I think there is right or wrong answer for each of us, single person. There's no framework on this. Everyone thinks differently. I of course have my own thoughts.
But it doesn't mean that what works for me works for you as well. So please do your homework and, you know, try to write down three numbers, but you track a lot right now, maybe even on a daily basis, are there linear activities or can they pre-create compound value? Does it actually matter? Right. If it's linear, that you might be on the wrong path, you know? So that is the second thought. I think it's super important to get it out. And the third thought is basically I stopped working and started building systems instead.
So I think it's a pretty important thing. I want to share with you guys. So I stopped doing work manual work instead of, and then I started building systems. So let me explain what that means. Most founders. Um, I think that includes me for many years are always in execution mode, right? Something comes up. Our brain process it and we do it. Something else come up, our brain process it and we do it. So we're always grinding and we're always checking things off the list, right? Whether that's like a to-do list or a paper on the list, whatever.
It feels productive because as founders, we always do different things. However, the truth I realized is like being busy doesn't always equal to being productive. So what I have recently learned and shifted to is what I call like an architect mode. Instead of doing the task, every task comes to me, I do it and get it done. I'm starting to realize which task can actually be like repetitive and which task can be automated, right? By building systems that automate think different things. And if I don't actually build a system, I can build a mental system in my head.
about how do different things, A, B, C, and D, so I can get it done faster. So I build a system that doesn't work. So I build it once and let it run forever. Right. So for example, like even how I make podcasts, I make content and also how I make project management decisions. It used to be a very manual workflow of basically documenting A, documenting B. And for most of the times when I just started, there's no, there's no workflow. There's no documentation. So every time, every task has to take a significant amount of time. And that is actually normal.
However, once you start doing something in a systematic way, and if every time it takes a few hours of your time just to do a single podcast, you have to come back and think about, am I, am I spending the right time on this? Is it giving me the right ROI? Right. And if it's not, I think you definitely need to find a way to optimize that. And also I think for us as well, we have the customer support. It used to be eating up hours every day. It's still eating up hours every day. And someone asked a question, we answer some ticket, we answer repeat forever.
And now we're open sourcing a different tool called chat route and it handles 80 % of the customer questions automatically. built a system basically that connects with opening and clod and also securely process customer data and builds the responses to them. So it runs 24 seven and it was able to actually help with a lot of the customer support tickets that we have. I don't have a concrete number, but I personally have freed up a lot of time from doing that. Right. Delegation is also a beautiful thing. If you know how delegate delegation can work very beautifully as like a way of saving time as well. So now I'm.
Delegating to John who was for my team and then obviously I and him him and I we actually develop frameworks together to actually do things together So even for some I'm delegating to with him We have a framework we have a system and he actually have to do that system to save his time and in return save my time I say the team's time, right? So the system can always run without me the system is wrong without John hopefully and it's okay to be initially spending some time on that but eventually I think
everything that you do in your life, I think you should try to make it more automated, try to make it more systematic. And here's a question, ⁓ I think, you know, how, here's how you know, a simple framework that you can run to see if you're like in the execution mode or if you're in architect mode, right? So this question is harsh even for myself, but you know, if you disappeared for like a week, seven days, if you just stop working entirely and not replying to anything and not doing anything, would your business keep running? Right?
If everything stops, you're doing work, but if everything keeps running, you have built entire systems and that's a difference, right? And quite frankly, even with me, if I stopped working for the next seven days, the company will still run, but it's a much slower route, much more less productive route. So that is something I have to personally take in and try to improve better. Where are the bottlenecks? Where are the things that we're spending a majority of our time on? Where does my team get stuck? And what are the processes that we can actually automate? And in turn, you don't have to use
you don't actually have to code for things to be automated, right? You can use simple tools like Zapier or different things that can actually connect app A to app B and successfully automate. you know, that that's the way it goes, right? That can save a lot of time and using web hooks and different things. If you know how to code, obviously can make it a lot easier. But I think for the majority of us, we don't actually need to know how to code in order to build systems. And I think that's the beauty of it.
And even like in CHAT GPT right now, you can build simple workflows and reminders and different things. So I will probably be publishing more of that if you're interested in those workflows. ⁓ you know, obviously subscribe at FOUNDERREALITY.COM I'll be sharing more of these as we go. Right. So how to start, give you, let me give you a framework about how I start. I basically look at the last three tasks I did today or this week. Right. And you have to keep them either keep a mental note of them, or you can write them down.
And if something that keeps happening, something that keeps coming up that that keeps bothering you taking away from your time, you have to write them down, right? So if you write each one of them down and you compare it after a couple of days, you can actually see, can any of them become a system? Can AI handle it? Excuse me. Or can software automate it? Right. So can you document the process so that can actually run it without you? I think those are actually pretty important. ⁓ I think if the answer is yes, stop doing the task and start building the systems.
And I personally also think it's important to think about, it's also, it's also important to think about how urgent and important and how much time it takes for tasks. So it's not just simply, I did three things today. And then, you know, one of the things I think could be automated. let me do it. If that one thing is the thing that you're going to do once a year or twice, or like twice a year and probably not as urgent or as important, right? However, if it's a task that you have been doing for the past, like many, if you have to do once a day or several times a day or several times a week.
then of course it has much more value. And also how much time it takes to complete it also matters, right? If something takes an hour of your time every time to do something, obviously this is something you need to manage because if you work for eight hours a day, that is one eighth of your work day. And if that reappears, that takes a lot of significant time of yours away. So try to build a system and do the task. I think a good thing about building a system is that it is hard for us to design.
The system and think about the system. It's actually quite overwhelming. So what I do is actually just ask like chat gpt or claude about how to automate a certain thing. And I think that's super, super important. Just like how to automate it. Instead of like saying, how do I build a system? Which in many times imply how to write code. And I think that can be very draining for some people just think about how to write code. But as I said, you don't have to write code. could be a mental process as well. It could be something on Zapier. It could be like simple Slack bots that doesn't need coding to remind yourself. Right.
So all these things can compound your leverage. Think about if you just save like an hour every day, how much, how many hours can you save a week? And that that compounds into investing those hours in something else. They eventually compounds. Right. So that's the third story. And you know, all of those three stories might seem different, but I think they're basically the same theme more or less, right? Performance about doing is finding the balance between building and broadcasting. And of course you need both to be successful as a founder. Matrix.
⁓ Measuring a matrix that matters is about measuring compound value instead of linear activity. What you measure determines your destination and where you will eventually end up being. And of course, systems overwork is about moving from doing tasks, just doing tasks, to actually building systems and leverages. And stop being reactive and start being proactive. If you can even leverage one thing this week, you can do that and that will save you a significant amount of time, right? And all these three things, what they require? They require the same thing.
they require a mindset shift, stop optimizing for feeling productive and actually start optimizing for compounding results. LinkedIn performance can feel productive, but it builds nothing on the long run, right? Checking daily metrics feels productive, but it misses the bigger trajectory and doing manual task every time feels productive again, but it doesn't scale. But here's what I want to share with you. I think real productivity is different.
building systems that compound, measuring what actually matters, sharing just enough to distribute what you did. Real productivity could be doing nothing and the system could run by itself. So here are the three questions I think you can ask yourself this weekend. Right? One, performance overdoing. What is your metrics? Are you at zero building a silence or a hundred percent, which is all performance and no substance, right? Find your number and be honest with yourself. Mine is 70 % building, 30 % sharing. So figure out what that number is for yourself and how you can get there.
The second is like, what are you measuring your life? Live like list your top three metrics right now. Are they linear or compound your life, right? If they're linear, try to find out a way to change them. If they're wrong. The third one is like, what work are you doing? That could just be a system document the things that you repeat a lot of times, the things that come to you that you repeat a lot of times and try to turn into a system. Let's try to do one this month. Try to do one this week. You know, just don't turn into a month. Try to do one this week.
So that's it. think three questions, answer them honestly, and I think something will shift in your workflow exactly. So as again, I'm George PU and this is the Founder Reality Podcast. I hope those three things change your mind and it has certainly changed mine. So I'll see you again next week. Thank you.