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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 (00:01.678)
So I wish that this episode will give you clarity on, you know, whether to build something and where to take that next step instead of just, you know, waiting on I have to be ready. I have to learn. I have to know exactly how to do A, B and C in order to do it. And I'll give you the antidote about what I think about building versus waiting. Right. So I have a lot of Twitter audiences who are consuming my content. Right. We all and as a Sarah founder, we
Obviously all turned to different platforms for learning if you're aspiring start a founder You probably have a lot of like books you can read you have journals newsletters and be inspired by other people on podcasts and all that but I think the biggest barriers for your success is that not starting things in the first place and I think from my personal experience not starting thing can be the biggest killer for your dreams and for your hopes and everything right so give an example
Before SimpleDirect, so before the venture does work for me, I started different, I think at least three different projects that failed, right? Add that I probably haven't even wrote about it in Twitter, so you're hearing it first.
George Pu (01:22.448)
So the first startup I started in my university days was I started a ride sharing app in college, right? Because it takes an hour and a half for the college town where I was at to the main city nearby where everybody lives, right? So there was this problem that college students don't have cars. They will have their parents or their family members pick them up or it'll take a long time for them to get to point one to point B. So I thought of this idea without being going too much into details. It failed.
spectacularly. And I think me as a founder, obviously, I was very humiliated at the end as well at the pitch competition. I remember the judge was telling me, you're like, how can you keep women safe in those vehicles, right? That you're hiring these, like, you know, basically people to try from point A to point B on the ride sharing app, how can you make sure they're safe? And on top of my head, I actually couldn't know how to describe how to answer that question. So I got humiliated on the stage.
And there are also questions about how can you make sure that insurance costs for these type of activities actually justifies because on the insurance on a number scale, it doesn't work. Right. So obviously after that competition, my, my, you know, project partners left and the company collapsed. So, which is good because by then we didn't incorporate anything. It was just an idea that we had pursued for four to five months in college, my first year. And then I started a travel booking app or like a travel planning app.
And that was way before AI, HHBT. So it was just basically about planning your trips better. So there was like a similar to a Google Trips interface, if you remember that. So Google failed that as well. So I guess I'm happy that failed. So I failed so many projects and I started on multiple things. Each one of them, I guess, humiliated me very bad at the end, but I have learned many pieces out of it. So for my first Rice Sharing app, I've learned that economy of scale.
I've learned that in order to do something, you need scale and you need to figure out the economics before getting into it. Operationally, I've learned that I actually need to pick people who are passionate about something and not just business school partners who think, okay, this could be a cool project on my resume. So the amount of lessons I've learned while working on those initial projects, I think it's more than six years ago, actually. I think it's probably like eight years ago, nine years ago, right? It's still fresh in my head.
George Pu (03:42.675)
And only by doing something and failing or succeeding in other ways, obviously having a startup, you'll fail and succeed in different things. So for your wings, right, you're going to learn from your winnings for your fails. You're going to, you're going to learn from the failings. So these are all different things that you could learn. And I think the biggest barriers that I see many people have, right? It's just like, and by the way, I do see many of my followers on Twitter. They are building new things.
They have the new project. So kudos to you and congratulations for your launch and congratulations for launching. Right. But for more people, think the more problem is like they think, okay, it's not ready. I need this. I need that. I need market analysis. I need enough money to start this. Right. It's all excuses. And then coming back to the idea that, I need to learn exactly how startups work. Right. I need to go on Y Combiners YouTube channel. I need to finish Y Combiners startup school series. Right. Before I can start a company.
So those are all ideas that are bad. And I think nothing beats having an idea and in the next minute or 10 minutes, you go out and execute it. Nothing beats that. Right. So I think that's just super, super important. And furthermore, I want to talk primarily about some of my examples about like how people who are actually writing books, writing newsletters and doing podcasts and doing YouTube channels, teaching you how to build.
they actually might not know exactly what they're doing as well. Right? So a good example of this is that you can think about the economies of scale. You can think about if a founder is super, super successful in their lives, right? The economic incentive of creating a becoming content creator, obviously, irreversibly goes down to zero. So as an example, right, if somebody is an author of a business book, right, obviously the chances of them becoming as really successful.
or coming from becoming a very successful style founder. I think that is very low chance. Right. So in order to be the best at what you do, sometimes maybe you will share a little bit of iceberg about what you feel. So in involves, you know, and many other content, that's why Twitter is great because you can learn from the best and you can get inspired right from things that they say. But no one actually teaches you how to do A to B, right? Not even me. I couldn't even teach you how to do A to B with the content spaces that we have. Right. And the thing is,
George Pu (06:06.607)
In the books industry where I started my journey in college days, I started learning a lot from books. And the unfortunate thing is that books are probably the least important thing to let that you can learn. Right? First of all, the technology is transforming faster and faster than ever. Right? Like I saw a book called like AI 2041 and I was like, okay, how the hell can you tell what is going to happen in 2041? I couldn't even tell what's going to happen in 2026, 2027. How can you jump that far ahead?
And some of those books are just, it doesn't make any sense to read and ask for it after you read it. You're like, okay, I'm not really taking away anything from it. So for me, for reading books, I read things that are outside of my domain. So for example, I read this book, I mentioned it before called Five Types of Wealth. I really like the perspectives that these books bring me to. It makes me reflect on a of things in my life, right? So I think we should think super helpful. However,
If you're learning from these books about how to be better at doing what you do, I think the utility of it is actually quite low. And same thing goes for example, for like newsletters or podcasts or Twitter, right? So I'll give it another example about myself not being a frequent coder, but in college and even like in early days of my startup, I was really eager to be a better co-contributor, even though I barely write code around that time.
So I bought all these sort of books like jumping to C++ and like, you know, instruction to C sharp and know, Python books and analysis and all this and that. However, I don't think I bear. I really read it like I okay, no JS. I think I read a little bit of it, but I just gave up. Right. Because like when you're not actually doing something, you're just learning the theories of it. It's like, it's like reading a book called play basketball one on one. I how are you supposed to be good at it?
right? If you don't actually play it. think about it in sports perspective. And I think building a startup is like sports, right? It's a, it's a form of sports in itself. The business world is sports in and of itself. It's very competitive. So if you're comparing yourself, for example, with playing basketball, how can you, how can you really be good at it without playing it? Right? How can you be really good at doing something without doing it? And this is where I think experience really comes in. Right? So obviously in the last episode, we talked about vibe coding.
George Pu (08:20.399)
For example, like I would never know if I have coding is so trash and vibe coding will absolutely not work because if you look online 99.9 % of the people online are saying why coding is great and it's going to disrupt industry is going to change the world is going to make you rich blah blah blah. Like everyone is saying that vibe coding is so good, right? But in reality it's just really not good. It's not great. And I wouldn't know that without trying it myself, right? I've seen people who are criticizing by coding very few people who selected a few people.
And I was like, okay, maybe they're not serious. Maybe you're coding it wrong, right? And that is a bias, I guess, we have. It's like, when we are really bought into this group thing, it's very hard for us to think otherwise, to think outside of the box. And I think that is the main problem. So it's great that we're reading those newsletters about how to start a startup or even like, you know, how to execute, how to scale, how to grow, you know? Even for successful founders, they have wrote some books. It is the same problem, I think, in and of itself is that
you're not learning new things from it. Right. And I'm not saying it for me right now, even back in the days, what I will learn is I will learn theories. I want to actually learn things that are useful for me to like execute and move forward. So that is a problem. Right. What is the antidote? I think the end of is let's start with a few theories. Let's start with a few steps about how we can approach this better. And the first thing is, that to start, right? To start. And I remember
to start the huge problem many people is about George. I don't have an idea. I don't know where to start. Right. I only have a concept of a plan. I don't have anything else. And to be very frank, I was in the same spot. I think in 2018, which is like close to six years ago, I was in the same spots in 2018. And back then I was traveling. I remember I was in New York. I was looking around and I was looking at different things. I was like, okay. At a time I was still working for my internship at one of the blushing companies in San Francisco.
So I was really thinking about, really wanted to quit my job. I really wanted to start something new, but the hard part really is I don't know exactly what to start. So if you're feeling that I feel you, I was exactly in the same spot, right? I was stuck in the thing about picking a business plan or picking a business idea. And what do I do if I pick the wrong business idea? So my suggestion is you can always pivot. And that's true. You can always pivot. Like my business, SimpleDirect, is pivoting.
George Pu (10:44.941)
this week, last week, you know, we're pivoting, you know, even if we're like a five year old startup, we're still pivoting. Right? So there's nothing wrong about starting something. If we don't have anything to start, think about potentially starting your own brand, right? Be your own brand ambassador and talk about you, your life, your story, and your view on certain things, topics, right? And I think that can get you the initial start that you have in a community, right? Or engaging with people who have more followers than you, or engaging with people who are in the industry.
communicate with them your ideas, that could be a start as well. Right. And as you talk to more people, you're understanding more and more about their problems. And I think that is a good start. Secondly, I think let's think about exactly solving the problem, right? So for example, that's just brainstorm at this very moment. So I'm a content creator now. I just started creating content about a month ago, right? About a month ago, getting serious. And now I'm creating podcasts. So my bottleneck myself, we're creating all these content is that I
trying to use AI to automate a lot of these things. But AI is also very terrible at automating things when you're giving them enough instructions, right? You're not giving them enough instructions. If messes up, cannot reflect to priori context, right? You understand your podcast, but only by saying instructions. So theoretically, right? What if we can build an AI tool that can basically be for every content creator?
This tool will learn from all the best content creators ideas and listen to the podcast and build a content bank and also build a memory of the content creators content so that every time the content creator is asking for something new or asking for feedback, this AI can create it. So it's called content creation or content bank AI. So this is new idea. So if I have this new idea, that is because I have this problem myself. So this is the second thing.
I think it's really important that if you are a user of your own product at first, that is actually the best products. Uber came from this. think Travis Kalanick and his co-founder, they were at Obama's inauguration 2009. And then after it was over, they couldn't find a cab and Uber was born, right? Same thing goes for Airbnb, those old founders. Same goes for Dropbox, right? Drew Houston, who couldn't.
George Pu (13:03.196)
couldn't actually find something to store his large files on the cloud across multiple devices. So he, so, you know, that was boring. So it's always a good idea that if you are actually the first user of your product and you actually significantly find it improves your life, it's time to scale. It's time to grow it further. Right. So try to be that. think sometimes I'm regretful that I'm not, you know, simple direct products. I'm not the target user for it. So sometimes I often think back.
and feel a little bit regrettable about that because I always think if I were to be the target customer of my product, I can make the product a lot better and I can understand it a lot better from my perspective and I can market it to more people. So if you have that, that is a superpower, do it, do it, do it and launch your product right away. And I think the third part, I think the third piece, which is also important is like, how do you get the word out? Right? And most people are afraid of this is that, okay, I built my product, but I have absolutely no idea about how to scale, how to get my product out, how to get
people to know about my product, etc, etc. So that was also blocking a lot of people, including builders. They're afraid that if they build something, they're not able to get it out. Right. And I think to resolve that, I think the best way is to just launch it. Right. That's another thing I think most people are really bad at these days is either afraid, oh, I mean, if I launch, nobody's going to use them, I guess, embarrassed, and I'm going to lose my motivation about this app. So I'll talk to you about the third startup I've launched that have failed.
The third idea that I've launched that failed. And I don't think I've shared this as well, right? But it was basically an app that gives people cashbacks based on their spendings. So it's a cashback app that links to your bank account. And when you're purchasing something in the future, it gives you offers. For example, if you're physically at Walmart, it will give you a Walmart offer. And obviously we will work with different merchants, local merchants to produce those offers. When you're in Walmart, gives you, or your nearby Walmarts, right?
you'll give you a specific offer that immersion wants to get. And if you use your link card to get it, you'll get a cashback back. So it sounds like good idea. We built it fairly fast. And then, you know, obviously we launched it, right? And then so skip to the end. It didn't work, but skip back. Let's talk about launch strategy. So this product is one of the most successful part that we have launched. And the only thing that why it's successful is because we launched on product hunt, right? And if you don't know, product hunt is this place where you can launch your product pretty quickly.
George Pu (15:28.317)
And except product con, think there's also a few other things. think Indie Hacker is one of them. I think Hacker News is another one. And there are many, many other ones that are there, including in the description below. I launched it. So I launched it. I launched Evolve, which is the app's name. I launched Evolve on product con, I think on a Thursday. And I think it became, it just, didn't do any marketing beforehand or afterwards, but it became, think number two or number three of the product con for that day, which is crazy, right? Because like,
I think maybe what I did right is like I created something that people can feel relevant to cashbacks, know, like earning money, making money. I think everyone was happy to see that. So and a product was available at the time. So we basically just got people to come home to product content. And if you're happy with it, they'll click visit the website when we still go to the website and then they will download the app and try it out. Right. So even until this day, we still have people signing up from the product, can't a few years ago.
So also what we did is that we created a referral mechanism, right? In which like everybody who refers a friend, they each get $5, right? And if you reach a threshold like $25, $50, you can cash it out. So we have launched that referral program in conjunction of the product launch. So when product people came, right? And they saw the referral mechanism and they instantly share the new words with their friends. So that's why today we're still seeing signups. And the cost is very negligible. I think the cost...
of like the amount of money that we paid out. It's very minimum compared to how much it was spent on Google ads and Facebook ads or et cetera. So the key to the story is that you actually don't need to spend money on marketing. Most people think about, we're launching this product and the solely solution to this is that we're going to spend money on Google ads. We're going to spend money on Facebook ads or Instagram ads, cetera. That's the way to get audiences. And that's actually wrong. I think the best way to do it is to launch your product solution.
not as like a groundbreaking world changing tool, but specifically a tool that solves a unique problem for the user and be really humble about it. Right. I think when we launched evolve, the idea really was we're here to help you with cashbacks because most people, because so many Americans today are wasting their money on bank fees, right. And they're not really making their debit cards work for them. And not everyone has credit cards. Some people only have debit cards and Clint teens, right.
George Pu (17:50.005)
and also seniors and also like people who don't have many high income. They don't have a credit card. So they don't they're missing out on cashbacks. And we're basically saying that we're here to help you earn cash back with your debit cards. You know, so that was the simple, very simple value proposition that we put out. And I think it resonated with people because it was honest, right? We're very clear about what we're here to solve. We're very clear about who we're here to help. And we're also very clear about the incentives like, if you sign up today, you can get sorry about the way there's no cash.
Et cetera, et cetera. So that's why even today, I think we launched 2021. So it's like four years after we still have signups from this app, even though we have failed. It has failed and it was not being maintained, I think for quite some time now, but we still have signups, right? And that's so powerful. And I know YC founders, I know other founders who have like done many of these stuff before. They are actually very jealous of the traction that Evolve app has gotten because they don't see as much traction as us, which is just like one of the projects that I've launched.
right, which is crazy. So I think the third barrier is like launch, but I just told you how to launch it, you can launch as well. You don't have to be afraid of that. Nobody's gonna say nobody's gonna use your product. Build a really good referral system, launch on the popular sites and be very clear, very honest about who you're targeting and why, right, and be very humble about it. That's your key to success. Don't brag it. Right. So I think we've gone through many of these things. Let me see what's
while I was on a docket. think eventually, I think my takeaway is that you actually don't really have to learn from many places before you can start. And quite frankly, I think just by executing, starting and doing, you're learning 50 to 100 times faster than just reading and learning your theories. Right. And this doesn't just cover being a founder. I think this covers in many different cases, entrepreneurship, founder, you know, like sports, new sports, going to gym.
driving different things, right? If you're a new skill, the best thing is to do it, right? Like, so for example, I'm actually a beginner at learning French, and I actually didn't go to a language school to learn it, right? Instead, I downloaded Duolingo and just started doing that every day. So it sounds really stupid to just be using Duolingo, but I've been doing doing that for I think, 160 days now in a row, and I have become a much better.
George Pu (20:09.929)
French speaker and French listener than if I have never started, right, then I have just learning the theories or reading books. I have a few books here I have never read, which is probably the best thing to do because like, why would I read books and theories to learn it, right? The best thing should be just to do it to speak it to listen to it, right? So even launching my JVD app and just talking to the voice AI on the phone in French, that is much better, right? So there are many different ways to learn
And I'm hoping this episode give you the insight about how exactly you can launch something. And my last advice is like, don't read any business books. Don't read any, you know, excessive don't do any excessive reads on Twitter, newsletters, YouTube and podcasts about how to just to learn how to start something or how to do something. The best way to learn is to do it. And I think it's been probably repeated a few times in tech community. So I think I hope I'm not just like repeating something. My advice is to start something.
build something and sell something right and each one of those things is can be free. You don't actually have to spend more than $50 on it in total from start to end. So build your best startups, do your best thing and I'll see you on the other side. So you're listening to the founders reality podcast by George Poo, which is me and you know, we're releasing new episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And if you have any thoughts about the podcast, the content, the podcast or anything like that,
can always write to me at george at guest simple drive.com or george at founder reality.com. That's where you can reach me and also go to founder reality.com for a new episodes we're releasing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And we're also going to read out all the new users, new readers comments every weekend. So got to see you and see you next episode.