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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Daniel (00:01)
Okay.
Dagobert Renouf (00:01)
Daniel,
welcome to lunch day.
Daniel (00:03)
Hey, Doug Abet, good to be here.
Dagobert Renouf (00:07)
Yeah, and we were already starting to talk, so that's why I started recording. And yeah, man, it's, I don't know where to start because I like, I think like we all know you. And so I'm like, what can, but you know, I haven't, I mean, I didn't watch everything about you, but like, I don't know if...
people got into how you became an indie maker, how you got this started. I know you were working at Amazon before, I think, and that was your big thing. So yeah, can you tell me about that? Because I already start like this, and I remember you when you started becoming big on Twitter like four years ago or something. So yeah, how did you actually even...
Daniel (00:40)
correct yes yep yeah
Yes.
Dagobert Renouf (01:00)
What was your career like? How did you start your career?
Daniel (01:03)
Yeah, I a very typical software developer career. I grew up in Malta, small country in the Mediterranean. ⁓ studied computer science, worked in a couple of small companies. Malta doesn't really have, at least at the time, tech industry. ⁓ After about four years working there with smallish companies doing small things, I was feeling a bit of missing out, I would say.
wanting to work in sort of bigger companies, mostly to learn and to sort of be exposed to new things. At the time, just talking, you know, 2010, nine, 2010, 10, Dublin, Ireland was a bit like the Silicon Valley of Europe. I don't know if it's still the case, but where all the tech companies had their headquarters and long story short.
me and my wife before we were married, sort of took the plunge, one-way flight, went to Dublin, we quit our jobs in Malta. we said, yes, and this was, was, yeah, exactly, I was 26 or 27, something like that. And we basically just had like three months of rent covered in Dublin and said, if we don't manage to find something within two months, we'll come back, we'll live with my parents for a while until we...
Dagobert Renouf (02:02)
So you were in Malta and you bought... Okay, like 15 years ago you moved to Dublin.
Daniel (02:23)
the group and we'll figure it out. So that sort of was a bit of a bit of an adventure. But anyway, it turned out well very quickly. My wife found a job at Microsoft. I found a job at Amazon and things were going well in terms of I was learning a lot initially. Again, initially salary wasn't anything spectacular. I my my salary at Amazon at the time was about fifty five thousand euros better than I had in Malta, but nothing, you know, particularly
Dagobert Renouf (02:49)
yeah, that's not huge. Yeah.
Daniel (02:53)
fascinating, but I was getting what I wanted for. was basically, you know, I had used databases for a long time as an engineer. This was the, yes, entry level. was the software engineer level four was basically the entry level place at the time. But I had what I, what I wanted for, know, was a small team of about five people, very experienced engineers, you know, the way they taught about things was very different.
Dagobert Renouf (02:59)
and you are working software and yeah.
Daniel (03:21)
I was mostly, even though I did a computer science degree, was mostly self-taught like many of us, right? So ⁓ I was getting that exposure of people who think very rigorously about proper engineering stuff. I was basically working, yeah. So I was working in the monitoring team, which basically we built software and tools for application and server monitoring. Eventually the flagship, it was part of AWS, the flagship product was CloudWatch.
Dagobert Renouf (03:35)
And what were you working on?
Daniel (03:50)
which many people who use AWS use. So I spent all my career at Amazon there almost a decade in the CloudWatch team. ⁓ And what was interesting because I was always very interested in databases since I started tinkering with software, but of course just using them, creating indices, making them perform, whatever. But there I got the experience actually thinking about designing databases because we're building our own.
Dagobert Renouf (03:50)
Yeah, I was gonna say, okay.
Daniel (04:16)
time series databases and sort of data structures and complicated, interesting stuff. And it was very fascinating for a while. anyway, long story short, after a couple of years in Ireland, my manager at the time was about to have a, he was from Seattle. He was about to have a baby who wanted to return back. And he asked me and another person in my team if we wanted to come back. And initially, actually, I said no, because at the time I was feeling like...
Dagobert Renouf (04:38)
Wow.
Daniel (04:42)
I'm a bit conservative with sort of big changes. Wasn't something on my radar. I felt I was setting my roots there. This was 2012, early 2012. Wait, the offer, I think I am in late 2011, right around Christmas time. fact, I talking to my family during Christmas and they said, you know what? I don't feel it, like, you know, taking the plunge, everything. And I don't really remember what happened. Yes, exactly, exactly. Something happened, however, I think, sort of.
Dagobert Renouf (04:46)
No, I hear you. So what year is this? It's like 2013 or something like that? 2012, okay.
Wow, conservative European mindset.
Daniel (05:12)
We thought we weren't even married at the time, again, like me and my wife and was, of course, this is funny. Getting a bit gray area here. But sort of what prompted us to get married quickly was we changed our mind and we said, you know, maybe we should try this. What's the worst case again? Like if we don't like it, we come back, you know, not a big risk. For immigration purposes, we needed to get married. So we rushed getting married.
Dagobert Renouf (05:22)
Okay.
No, for sure.
I know, well I'm getting
married so quickly because you know, needs, thank you, she needs to come, I want her to come full time, know, and she needs a visa because she's from Russia. Yeah.
Daniel (05:41)
Congrats, by the way. Yes. Exactly, there you go.
which, know, saying this in public, we should be a bit careful because you get into ⁓ anyway, we had been together for like 10 years. So it was about time anyway for us. So we went to Seattle, I think, probably.
Dagobert Renouf (05:56)
Yeah, it's okay.
Daniel (06:09)
my wife more, I think it immediately clicked better with the American culture. For me, was fine both places, but there was something here that I think made her more happy. And here, my career at Amazon was interesting. No, I think making friends and things like that. I think in Ireland we were both working and we were very much, I don't know, there was something missing. It's hard for me, but me, I adapt. Yeah, and again, super nice people at Ireland as well.
Dagobert Renouf (06:19)
Like what? Like what? Like what?
In the US they are very welcoming. I don't know Ireland, but I know in the US they are super like... It's easy to meet people.
Daniel (06:38)
But there was just something about that feeling of forming a community, going, taking Zumba class and making friends there and building a circle. ⁓ And in addition to that, which was a positive thing, ⁓ my career at Amazon started to take off. Now, it's interesting. So when I was asked to move to Seattle, my compensation pretty much doubled. The offer was 120K.
topped me up with some stocks as well, nothing significant, 20 or 30K or something like that, but it was already a big difference. Cost of living maybe a little bit higher, but not radically higher. But what was interesting was that after probably eight months I got promoted and within a year or two I was making 250K, which again, I wasn't even thinking about that amount. I remember when I moved to Ireland, I thought if in 10 years I was making 100K, I would be incredibly happy.
Dagobert Renouf (07:26)
Wow, yeah.
No, yeah,
that's like the European thing. And like, I have a question about this is like, because I know, I personally, and I know many people like we have this idea, and I used to have that, you know, in the US, they're so productive, they're so focused on work, and we have this idea. And we don't realize that we have very good work ethic here. And we tend to have high quality work. And so when I worked with Americans, I realized
Daniel (07:36)
back to time. So... Yeah, yes.
Dagobert Renouf (08:04)
I was highly valued because of this. And maybe that's what was for you also, because maybe in Ireland, was, like your level was quite high probably and more valued there.
Daniel (08:07)
Yes, think so, yeah.
Yeah, think, especially I think the, you know, being invited to move to Seattle, not everyone got that offer. So I think that was part of, again, there was that bit of, I think I was performing, like you were saying, like to American expectations. ⁓ But ⁓ yeah, it's, ⁓ you know, the culture is a bit different. Of course, you can't generalize too much. I mean, there is everything.
Dagobert Renouf (08:21)
Yeah.
Daniel (08:44)
But ⁓ I think what's more important, however, in terms of compensation is that there's just a more competitive market, at least at the time. Again, I don't know now how things are changing. ⁓ But the reality was that the competitors, the Googles and Microsoft and whatever, they were just competing for people and there was just a shortage of people. that basically... ⁓
It's something that seems like in Europe it happens less often. There's like a ceiling almost like which the ceiling exists in the American market as well, but it's way higher. think yesterday I was seeing a tweet where someone something leaked from the Microsoft compensation packages. There was like, it's quite incredible. Like you see the compensation for these just employees. I did not like owners going all the way up to, you know, 2 million a year. Of course, you know, after like 20 years of experience or not immediate, but still, you know,
Dagobert Renouf (09:16)
Yeah.
Wow. But still, yeah.
Daniel (09:39)
It's not something I would have even expected.
Dagobert Renouf (09:40)
Yeah, in France, the ceiling
is gonna be like 60, maybe 80 if you like, you know, yeah.
Daniel (09:45)
Yeah, exactly. Yes, yes, yes. That's
how I was brought up as well to sit in. So this was all surprising to me. This actually, I think, confused me a little bit because here what was happening in the meantime, there was starting to be quite strong diminishing returns on my own learnings. You I learned a lot in the first couple of years, but then you start to deal with the politics and, you know, management and doing all the purposeless stuff.
Dagobert Renouf (10:07)
Yeah.
Daniel (10:13)
I was still learning a little bit, but not too much. And certainly my motivation to work was diminishing. But in the meantime, they were basically still dangling bags of money in front of me. And I think there was an interesting point where ⁓ this was about 2015 or 2016 where I got a competing offer from Oracle, Oracle had a better reputation of being one of the less desirable employers. Old boring, but they were building their own cloud.
Dagobert Renouf (10:36)
Old, boring, yeah.
Daniel (10:41)
business and they were basically hiring super, super aggressively, especially from AWS ⁓ engineers. And long story short, to make it easy, there was a guy who I used to work with, he went to Oracle, he invited me for coffee and I said, you know what, I'm not really going to go to work at Oracle. But he said, look, let's just talk anyway, I'll tell you a little bit what I'm seeing here. And he told me, look, ⁓ if you want, I can probably have my manager make you an offer without an interview. You don't even need
An interview we know, we worked with you, I can vouch for you, whatever. And it basically was almost like hard to refuse seeing what they want to offer me, right? We're just saying yes, no need to prepare and whatever. And this guy, due to his words, I mean, we literally went to talk to his manager together and said, okay, by Monday I'll send you something. And at the time I was making about 240k at Amazon, they made me an offer of 260k plus...
You you come to a new team, you lead your own division and whatever. It was super exciting. And on the spot, I said, yes, you know what? I'm a bit bored here. I'm coming. And I went to my manager at Amazon and said, look, I'm leaving. This is what happened. They made me a really good offer. I want something new. I had been here five or six years, five years actually at the time. And then my manager told me, look, go home. Think about what would make you stay.
Dagobert Renouf (11:40)
Yeah, yeah. Exciting? Yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (12:06)
and come back to me with something, we'll try it, I'll bubble it up and we'll see what happens. And I didn't even think much about it because I thought, I knew I was interviewing people at my level when I was there and I knew that at that level that I thought there was a hard ceiling of about 250k in compensation because we used to get people asking for 280 and we said no, no, there's absolutely no way we can get you that much. So I thought there was no, not going to be any chance.
Dagobert Renouf (12:22)
Yeah, okay, so you...
Daniel (12:32)
My manager called me the next day at like seven a.m. in the morning and I asked me, hey, did you think about what would make you stay? And on a whim I said, look, if I were to get like a six month sabbatical and you would match my offer, I would stay. I thought that would probably make me, and they said yes, believe it. Not only they measured, but actually they beat it. They got to 390K and they gave me four months of sabbatical instead of six months.
Dagobert Renouf (12:59)
So they give you four months not paid, I guess, and then...
Daniel (13:02)
Not, no, no, paid,
paid, no, no, paid. So it was technically worded as a working sabbatical, but I could do whatever I wanted to. So ⁓ I stayed home. I was thinking with projects on my own without going to the office, without supporting to anyone. ⁓ And it was basically an attention play, right? And then later I learned they do this occasionally with people who, especially I think they didn't want me to, they didn't want to lose me to a...
Dagobert Renouf (13:14)
Yeah, okay.
Wow.
Daniel (13:30)
competitor that they were ⁓ fighting against in addition.
Dagobert Renouf (13:32)
Yes, but it also makes
sense to refresh after so many years. It makes sense also to take a break and then come back. Maybe you will be more, or maybe you will really not want to work for them anymore, but yeah.
Daniel (13:45)
In my mind,
look at this point, in my mind I had already realized ⁓ that a car there as a full-time employee here wasn't, I need to change at some point. just, it was so daunting because what do I do? just, again, like the idea of funding some venture backed startup wasn't appealing because I realized that would have been.
probably a worse arrangement. Basically I was longing for independence. That was the thing, but I just didn't really know. So I was going to still autopilot mode, trying to maximize my situation, but still not really optimistic about the future. I tweeted about this a few times, went a bit violent, but basically I looked around me and I saw everyone else higher up than me and I didn't envy their lifestyle. Basically people who are level up and two levels up, was seeing them.
Dagobert Renouf (14:14)
yeah. Yeah.
Daniel (14:40)
They were barely seeing their family, always stressed out, not really doing interesting stuff. And I said, you know, this place is not the right for me. And I wasn't necessarily thinking that going to another company was going to change anything. anyway, so I did. So then I started this project. And when I came back, they offered me to build my own team and lead a new initiative and launch it as a sort of new AWS thingy.
Dagobert Renouf (14:52)
So did you still work for them after the sabbatical for a little bit?
Daniel (15:07)
It's what's called CloudWatch Logs Insight. Whatever, it's not something very interesting, but that's something that came out of that little bit sabbatical experiment. And I felt a bit of an obligation. It's funny, right? I psychologically, I felt like I didn't want to get out of the sabbatical and immediately say, hey, I'm leaving now after they topped me up with a bunch of money.
Dagobert Renouf (15:26)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Daniel (15:28)
So I let this project, like what happens with software, I thought it was going to take a year. You're familiar with this as well. And it ended up taking three years, almost three years instead. But at some point during this project, I thought as soon as this thing is done, I'm leaving. I felt like if I'm not leaving, then ⁓ I will never get another chance. And that's actually what happened.
Dagobert Renouf (15:36)
Yes, for sure,
and you will like,
probably, did you have any burnout or something? Because it must be kind of exhausting when you lose the motivation.
Daniel (15:56)
You know, it wasn't a liburno.
Yeah, it wasn't a liburno. I mean, at least I probably was on the brink of feeling the two burnout symptoms, but it wasn't like I was feeling depressed or anything, but just that feeling of, you know, I wasn't looking forward. Basically, I wake up and I start like, my God, I'm excited to go do this thing. my work at the time evolved to very much almost like a hybrid product manager.
Dagobert Renouf (16:19)
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (16:24)
team lead thing, I wasn't even coding almost at all for last year or two. Which there was some interesting challenge again, you're dealing with people and you're communicating up whatever, but I was ready to leave and not only to leave, I think in my mind, that chapter was closed. So I know a lot of people leave with, big, I think all career as an employee, at least in this kind of company, I didn't completely exclude.
Dagobert Renouf (16:43)
and the chapter is just Amazon or just the whole career.
Daniel (16:52)
maybe working something remote, whatever, but this kind of work where, hey, I'm part of a team, lots of pressure, big tech type thing. ⁓ Yeah. Not really. I mean, actually I should say I had, didn't really have something concrete, but I thought, you the most obvious thing was to bootstrap some software business because, you know, I had worked in software all my life. The most obvious thing, you know, what I was going to do. And I think,
Dagobert Renouf (17:03)
And so did you have an idea of what you were going to do when you...
success. Yeah.
Daniel (17:22)
I think I had this sort of naive reasoning. said, okay, I worked in software for 18 years total. Like I had specialized in databases. I knew how to build sort of these API services and whatever. said, are where my assets, my skills, my expertise, probably the best thing to do was trying to find something that hits all the things. So I was brainstorming a little bit like with that mentality is like, what can I do best? And let me try to do it.
a bit naive again because I ignored very much the marketing side. Now, in my defense, I didn't really completely ignore it because I immediately realized that I needed to do something. I wasn't that naive that I thought, I'll build something. so probably I did almost all the mistakes one could imagine in the first year. So I had left, yeah. So the project launched. I gave my notice. It was all good. People were a bit surprised, but...
Dagobert Renouf (17:55)
Yeah.
So at this point you had left the job and you started building? Okay.
Daniel (18:19)
February 1st 2019 I was on my own, right, for the first time in a long time. There was sitting here.
Dagobert Renouf (18:22)
Okay. And was it scary
for you to leave the... because I guess you get probably used to the compensation, the money, your family, everything. How did it... I guess you had some savings but...
Daniel (18:27)
Yeah.
You know, I think the only thing, I had
some decent savings. Yes, I think to be honest, it wasn't even scary. I think at the time it felt a bit selfish to be honest, because at the time I had two kids, my wife wasn't working and I was leaving. When I left, I remember this very feeling because I had almost $900,000 of unvested stock that we're going to vest in the next two years. Basically all I had to do was show up and those would basically vest.
Dagobert Renouf (18:43)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel (19:00)
in my account, right? And I had to tick the box literally on the UI to say I'm rescinding them because part of the, you know, quitting process. And then I remember feeling like, oh my God, I mean, this money that could have gone to my kids and my family, right? That I'm doing it almost like for selfish reasons. And I had to, you know, think about that because, I mean, I justified it and now I think it was right. You know, I'm improving. This is going to be an improvement of
Dagobert Renouf (19:00)
Yeah, you would get them, yeah. Free money, yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (19:29)
Lifestyle for just me being more available. My kids were still very young there. think my oldest my youngest was To step forward exactly right and the the extra independence was hopefully I thought it was going to make things easier as well I'd be more present and all those good things, but it's you know when you see something tangible like that like money It was hard. So it wasn't scary. It was that feeling of am I being again like
Dagobert Renouf (19:31)
Yeah.
It's like a step back so you can take a step forward like it's normal, you know, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (19:55)
Again, next theme first world problem here that I'm exaggerating something and anyway, so it was that bit of a dilemma. But then in the beginning, I think I thought I have some savings. I had calculated that I had about four years of runway if I had used all my savings and I kept my expense. So it was quite healthy and probably it hurts me a little bit to be honest because I took it too easy in the beginning. I think you talk about this. Yes, exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (20:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, I had five years with Logology, my previous startup and that was too much.
Daniel (20:23)
you
start to play around. I start to take things easy. I'm going to set up my IDE, I'm going to do the best and the greatest and whatever. And two times, yes. that's basically what's, and by having some money as well, was even spending, I'm embarrassed now to say about this, but I spent about just $2,000 for hiring a lawyer to write my terms and conditions and privacy policy. Like insane, like again, like I feel.
Dagobert Renouf (20:32)
Yeah, you can refactor two or three times because you have time.
Good.
Daniel (20:52)
I did the security reviews. Anyway, I was building this database product called user base, which I think the idea was actually quite good. The product super base, which is very popular now came about a year later was basically same concept. So I had to basically have this database as a service that you can call from your front end code without using any servers. It was basically the same. And I think a bit of my, you know, interesting feature was there was end to end encryption as well. was quite fascinating. You have basically data in a database where the
Dagobert Renouf (21:20)
Yeah.
Daniel (21:22)
Data is saved.
Dagobert Renouf (21:22)
I guess you were coming from AWS with super enterprisey kind of needs, so that was probably also.
Daniel (21:27)
Yeah, enterprise. And I
thought I felt at the time and this will probably be a bad lead of the market that was a lot of consensus was going to early 2019 of consensus about data privacy and the hackers as well. Now, I probably think it was probably, you know, of course, positive consensus still real, but probably like many things that it's like one of those not everyone is super paranoid that people are willing to see now with AI as we're sending them all our deep secrets.
Dagobert Renouf (21:51)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, nobody
cares. Yeah, it's funny.
Daniel (21:56)
And I wouldn't
say nobody cares, but the tolerance is probably much for if you're getting something very valuable like you got with AER, people are much more tolerant. And anyway, I probably overindexed too much on the index side. Like SuperBase didn't do that. So probably the only thing I did well at the time, however, because I do all these mistakes, I hired someone to help me part time and whatnot. I was building in public. So I started my Twitter account and yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (22:02)
Yeah, you're right. Yeah
And just curious, how did it
feel to go back to building something after these years of kind of like managing and politics? Yeah.
Daniel (22:26)
No, I was super accelerating. No, no, I was enjoying it. I
was hooked. I was enjoying it. was ⁓ accelerating and very fun. I wanted ⁓ this to work and I thought I was doing the right thing. And this was probably why I was doing these naive mistakes because I was probably focusing too much on the product, not really thinking about who's going to pay. And I think I had it.
Dagobert Renouf (22:50)
Yeah, you were excited.
Daniel (22:55)
I spent about nine months building this thing. And ⁓ initially I thought, basically at launch, launch day didn't exist at the time, but everything went right. Like I was front page on Hacker News for almost half the day, number one on Product Hunt for the day. I got a tweet that got like half a million views. It was even I think retweeted by Paul Graham of Y Combinator or quote retweeted or something. There was...
Dagobert Renouf (23:12)
awesome.
Wow.
So everything, you had the wind. Yeah.
Daniel (23:24)
A lot of interesting discussion. Everything that I could wish for, yeah,
everything happened. Even in the, mean, I got about 40 customers. This was, know, the pricing at the time was quite low, about $99 a year. So only a few, you 4,000 a year, nothing crazy or something like that. But it was an interesting sign, but still not enough. It wasn't like it made $100,000 in a day. So the second day,
was a bit of a crisis of anxiety. said, okay, everything went right. And still I only made like $4,000 or whatever. And I thought, now I'm in a fork in the road. What do I do next? Because I realized that for this to be even more valuable, it needed even more features. And I could see myself spending, by the way, I had spent almost $100,000 as well out of my own pocket to, again, hurt people, of silly things.
Dagobert Renouf (24:00)
Yeah.
Daniel (24:22)
⁓ So, and I had wiped out probably a fourth of my runway, right? Just with the time that had passed and the money that I spent. So I could see a fork in the road here. Do I do another push and maybe wipe out another quarter or more of my runway? And, but, you know, what are the guarantees that this would actually be enough? Maybe the occasion is still not sufficient. Yeah, like not sufficient. And, ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (24:43)
and maybe reach like 8k or 10k a year, but this is still very tiny. ⁓
Daniel (24:53)
I had a... it was a week, honestly, again, it wasn't like... I think it was good anxiety, right? The kind of anxiety that was literally keeping me up at night. I was just pacing around, whatever, thinking like, what do I do? Because I was really enjoying this new lifestyle. I really didn't want to go back, right? And I think this was probably the fuel. I was, again, remembering all the nonsense and whatever I was doing before. And I had this epiphany that's almost like I became...
Dagobert Renouf (25:02)
Yeah, I know,
Daniel (25:19)
This is my cattle not pets saying, right? It's almost like this project, you I had poured my energy into it and whatever, but I realized, you know what? I don't really care that much about it. What I care about more is my lifestyle. I just want to make money independently with my own projects, calling my own shots, deciding what to work on, what not to work on. And again, I was quite proud of what I had built, but I felt like the...
the fruit vendor, right? I mean, you go to a fruit vendor that is selling fruit, the fruit vendor doesn't care whether he makes money, he or she makes money from selling watermelon or bananas or apples, whatever, right? I mean, what they care about is they have their own business and they direct to the market. If people are asking for avocados and they're not carrying avocados, they get it and...
Dagobert Renouf (26:01)
Yeah, I see, yeah.
Daniel (26:12)
I don't really know why that analogy stuck in my head, but I felt like, you this is probably what I should be doing. And almost like as an exercise, I thought to myself, what if I try to do something that would make me a thousand dollars as soon as possible? This was, think, October, beginning of October of 2019. And I said, what could I make that would make me a thousand dollars by the end of the month? Something like that. And initially, the only thing I could think of was doing some
freelancing, again, nothing very glamorous, not really product based stuff. But I thought, could I even do that? I didn't know that. I could I sell myself? ⁓ And I started putting out a little bit. The first thing I did was I went to my LinkedIn connections and I started with letter A and I was asking myself, OK, what does this person do? How do I know them? Could I be helpful to them? And I went to the whole list and
Dagobert Renouf (27:06)
Okay.
Daniel (27:09)
At the end, I found a couple of people who I knew they probably needed some programming help. And basically my message was, hey, Dago, how are you doing? I'm doing some freelancing work. If you think I can think some things off your backlog, happy to help. And that line, I think, really worked. So I got two or three small gigs of people who basically just told me, we have these things that...
you know, that are incredibly boring. Nobody wants to do some migration of like from Rails 4 to Rails 5 or something annoying. There was a lot of cloud stuff, There were people who were moving from Google Cloud to AWS or whatever. And I said, yes, you know, leave it to me. And I was very disciplined. wanted to be, I didn't want to take too much of it still because I didn't want this to evolve into something that looked like a full-time job again. So I was only...
Dagobert Renouf (27:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
like an agency or something
crazy like that. You wanted to keep this lifestyle of independence and when you start working for clients, you kind of lose that.
Daniel (28:02)
Yeah, like I wanted...
Yes, you lose
that exactly. So I wanted this to be very much not even part-time, like quarter time I was thinking in my head, like not more than 10 hours a week of doing this financing stuff because I still wanted to build my own things and whatnot. But this changed everything, I think, because this gave me the peace of mind. ⁓ By the way, a few other random things that I was doing, again, to my credit, I did lot of mistakes, but in this case,
Dagobert Renouf (28:21)
Yeah.
Daniel (28:34)
I was very open-minded. I was doing almost anything. Like for example, there was a company, I'm sure this is not needed anymore in the age of AI, but I was helping them doing technical documentation. They had APIs, they were updating all the time, a bunch of the API docs, API reference docs were stale. And I said, just look, I'll go to all of them, I'll create examples. And so there were all these little things. There was another small company who I was helping them with interviews. So these were growing.
and I was chatting with their founder who was telling me, like, now I'm super swamped with interviews because we're trying to hire five people and all I'm doing is interviews all the time. And I said, look, what if I help you? Maybe I do the phone screen. And he said, oh, that would help so much. And he was just sending me a couple a week of like, why don't you do the phone screen with these guys and you give us the feedback. They were paying me, I don't know, like 75 or $100 per call. And all these little things were.
Dagobert Renouf (29:27)
So it's like 15 minutes and you speak
to, you get on a Zoom with someone and you see if they are legit.
Daniel (29:30)
It was
more like 45 minutes or something like that. I was basically had a bit of a checklist of like what to things to ask them about and there was from the feedback again not something I was particularly enjoying or whatever but it was something I I had done this when I worked at Amazon I did hundreds of these I saw I knew what to expect But basically when I was doing these things I was suddenly making you know four thousand five thousand dollars a month with these little odds and ends right and
Dagobert Renouf (29:47)
Okay, yeah, okay, so you know how to do that.
Daniel (29:59)
And that was still leaving me a lot of... This is piece of mind.
Dagobert Renouf (29:59)
So that's the peace of mind you were talking about it gave you.
Daniel (30:04)
At the time, lived high cost of living in Bulgaria, where I was living quite comfortably, kids, whatever. It wasn't even enough to close, but wasn't even breaking even with my living expenses. But it was still sufficient, first of all. It curbed... Yeah, slowed down the burn. Exactly, very much.
Dagobert Renouf (30:15)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And it like slows down the fall very, very importantly. Yeah.
Daniel (30:26)
which made the runway feel
like almost years now, right? mean, and, but I also felt that if I needed to, I could take another client, right? So, but I didn't need to, right? But that was much better than having something happening was much better than just thinking, maybe I could find something. No, no, I was, actually doing something. And, and over time, these little freelancing things evolved to being better. Eventually it's culminated probably my idea, my most optimal one.
Dagobert Renouf (30:29)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, here you go.
Daniel (30:54)
I don't know if you remember that, but I was freelancing for Gumroad. ⁓ For a couple of years I was doing that like quarter time we called it PMing, which was pretty much...
Dagobert Renouf (30:57)
AWS, good parts of AWS... ⁓ no, freelancing for government, dear.
Daniel (31:10)
you know, weekends type work, I was just very asynchronous on a project that I really enjoyed. And it's funny that goes then, know, mean, Gomez ended up being a big part of my life. Maybe we can talk about it later, but it started, it started, it started like this, which is
Dagobert Renouf (31:21)
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, we're going to talk about it. Yeah. So that was one
of these guys like you were you had Sahil like that. You just had him on LinkedIn and you
Daniel (31:29)
Yeah, mean, Sahil, it's funny.
So a little bit before that, when I was in this mode of like the food vendor approach, I was thinking, what do I have in me that I could just start to monetize little things? And one of them was self-writing a book that I had seen Adam Whetton of Tailwind, CSS, self-published books at the time. It was like he had this PHP book, PHP Refactoring Book, which was quite fascinating. He wrote this simple book where it's not because
Dagobert Renouf (31:47)
Yeah, yeah, I saw that too, back then.
Daniel (31:58)
Typically when I think a book, the types of books you buy, there's a kind of format, there's like a narrative or even if they're technical books, there's references or whatever. But this book was interesting because all it had was a bunch of ugly codes on the one page and a bunch of refactored nicer codes that does the same thing on the other page. And it was like, I don't know, like 50 pages of this. Here's how to do this weird convoluted for loop, nested for loops, and here's how to do it in a nicer pattern.
Dagobert Renouf (32:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel (32:28)
And he basically had a smallish audience of a few 4,000, 5,000 people. And he managed to sell like $60,000 worth of this book. And I said, oh my God, like it's funny because in the back of my mind, I had this aspiration to eventually write a book like many people think, but I thought, you know, I think a book was like this grueling process of finding a publisher, spending months and years refining. then I saw Adam self-write it, self-publish it, and that really inspired me.
Dagobert Renouf (32:46)
Yeah.
Daniel (32:57)
I felt I could do this. There are some things that I probably can convert some knowledge in my head into something tangible. And then I had a bit of a mini viral tweet where I said something like, ⁓ forget all the hype about AWS. All you need to know about is like these four AWS services, EC2, S3, RDS, and some other thing. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (33:23)
That's the best validation, right? A good tweet. You know, when you get a
tweet and you don't expect anything, like my wedding suit saying it comes from a tweet, comes from this AWS book you wrote. It's crazy. Launch day comes from, launch day is from a tweet. I'm sorry.
Daniel (33:28)
Yes. Yeah. Tweet. It's fascinating. And I remember it wasn't even the... Yeah, from a tweet?
Yeah. No, no, exactly, exactly. And it wasn't even the likes on the tweets. It was more the questions. Because people were coming to me and asking me, hey, should I use RDS or DynamoDB? Should I use SQS or this thing? And I was thinking, my God, these people, could go to anyone?
They come to me and it wasn't like a million people but I had a handful of people and I thought wow that's interesting and that in addition to seeing the Adam Whetton story made me think you know what why don't I time box a month at the time I said and I try to
Dagobert Renouf (34:11)
Wait,
I'm sorry, which story you said? I didn't catch that.
Daniel (34:14)
The Adam
Whetton book, self-publishing book, The Girl From Tailwind, yes. So yeah, so those things happened at the same time, I got inspired by the tweet, I saw his story. And anyway, I love this book, right? And I published it and it really well. I think part luck, part I executed well. I think part luck because I was probably expecting to make a...
Dagobert Renouf (34:17)
the guy from Tailwind, yeah okay I forgot his name, yeah okay.
Daniel (34:43)
maybe $5,000, that was my expectation. It ended up making over $100,000 in the first few months. And I the lag there, for some reason, ⁓ I got quite some very high quality endorsements. Some people who I wasn't even following, they weren't even on my radar, happened to see it and there were some good reviews. And know how things snowball sometimes. then used the tweets there, testimonials.
Dagobert Renouf (34:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
It was also like the
golden age of Twitter that was happening at this time. There was a lot like... It was kind of like...
Daniel (35:12)
Probably, yeah. There was also, yeah, people,
I don't even know how to explain it. Maybe it's not even reproducible today. These things changed. There was something probably culturally. I think it was also a bit new for someone to self-publish something. And ⁓ this also comes at, I had been almost 10 months building in public and sharing with those things attached. Like you have done a lot. Like, I mean...
Dagobert Renouf (35:30)
Yeah.
Daniel (35:39)
not asking anything, I didn't sell anything. So you had started to that goodwill. In fact, it was fascinating. I tweeted about this recently. I think I co-tweeted you ⁓ where a few people were telling me, I bought your book, even though I care nothing about AWS. I just want to say thank you because six months ago you answered a question when I asked you about incorporating an LLC or opening a business bank account, whatever. They told me you are very generous and that's...
Dagobert Renouf (35:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel (36:07)
Initially, I didn't like it. thought, well, I should probably defund you. Why? But then I started to realize this is actually a thank you economy. Maybe said a bit like what what you're describing. People like to like to support each other. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (36:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I started to embrace it.
It's hard for me to accept it. It's very hard for me to, it doesn't make sense to me. And I feel guilty, like some like, no, I shouldn't accept it. And I should say probably that you, I was tweeting about, I need to pay for my wedding in three months and I'm broke, but I'm gonna make it. And you offered to lend me $4,000 of no string attached.
Daniel (36:33)
It's, you know, but.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (36:46)
which I accepted and you gave it to me. So thank you so much for that. And that was my first like accepting that really that was that that was really accepting it. It was like very recently, like three weeks ago or something. And then there was this thing with the suit that started as a joke. And then I took it seriously because I saw people wanted to like most people didn't even want to be on the suit. They just wanted to give me money for my wedding. But I also wanted to give back. So the suit became an experiment to like
Daniel (36:52)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (37:17)
have all
of this community with me, like in a beautiful way. know, like I hired a stylist and everything, I'm doing it really cool because I want to make something beautiful. And it's what you said, like...
I'm still like not wanting to lean on that a hundred percent, like just like you post shit and people send you free money. I don't know, I don't feel amazing, but they can still push you for everything that you're doing. know, like they can still buy your products if it's just a little bit relevant, but I still feel like the need to make something still, but you know.
Daniel (37:39)
It's cut,
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No,
that's a necessary thing, of course. I mean, you need to be making something. ⁓ you know, this sounds strange to us describing like this, but it's not something, you know, unique. mean, goodwill and brand, even at big companies, right, is also part of this. ⁓ DHH of Rails, a couple of weeks ago, I think. ⁓
Posted something about he just pre-ordered the Tesla Roadster even though like it seems to be Nobody knows when it's going to come out almost like as a thank you to Elon Musk guys for
Dagobert Renouf (38:37)
Yeah,
because he was wrong. He misjudged him and he was apologizing.
Daniel (38:39)
He misjudged him and it's
almost like I want to support his mission and this is my way of doing it. It's a little bit the same. And you know, even Amazon, like Amazon for example, had a reputation of, of course, know, these big faceless mega-corps. Usually there isn't much of this, but even with Apple, right? mean, Apple as a brand, there's like this loyalty that, you know, they served me well. helped me. Maybe now it's changing again, like many, companies, things turn around.
Dagobert Renouf (39:04)
Yeah, but this loyalty
is still so strong, know, because we feel this, but yeah.
Daniel (39:08)
My parents, for example,
they returned something to Amazon and they just accepted, no questions asked. For them, it's so incredible. ⁓ know, this is amazing. I want to buy everything from them. And that's a little bit like that. It's part of the same thing. Accountants, when they prepare balance sheets, they had to invent a word for this, which can become very valuable. They call it goodwill, usually, and they can be...
millions of dollars even, mean, with companies like Apple, their Goodwill, their brand is worth billions of dollars, right? It's like, and Tesla and whatnot. And for us individuals, soul openers, Indies, whatever, this is part of it. I noticed this, it's funny, I was reflecting on my own behavior. So during the COVID pandemic, I picked up with working as a hobby, purely as a hobby thing, Not commercial. So, yeah, yeah, and I...
Dagobert Renouf (39:42)
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember you posting the tables you were making.
Daniel (40:05)
mostly from YouTube. So I found a few YouTube channels, are independent creators, they're building stuff and teaching how they do them. you build a bit of a, like with Twitter audiences, that you start to like certain people and you connect them. It's interesting, YouTube is very one-dimensional. I mean, you connect well with people because their own video, but there's less conversation with their followers because it's a bit more of a broadcasting.
Dagobert Renouf (40:19)
Yeah, you connect with some people.
Yes.
Daniel (40:33)
But then what happens is I was noticing that there's these people who I feel almost like I know them, because they talk about their stuff as well. They teach you a lot, you learn, there's video high bandwidth. And then the way I was almost like paying them back was sometimes, for example, they have like affiliate links in their YouTube video description. They're using a tool and I know I want to buy the same tool. And the easiest thing would be for me to go to Amazon and buy it. But then I pause and say, you know what? I'm going to go use the affiliate link.
Dagobert Renouf (40:52)
Mmm, yeah.
Yeah, you will go out of your way to use that. Yeah.
Daniel (41:03)
just I go a bit out of my
way exactly and they will never know it was me right and whatever but it's my way of thanking them a little bit like I mean to keep doing it yeah exactly this is a bit of the Kickstarter effect right the yeah I want to support this channel right so you start to see this a lot but you know you can't make people yeah just send you money like they're not going to most of the time they're not going to tell you hey
Dagobert Renouf (41:12)
And you want them to keep existing. You want them to, you know. Yeah, yeah.
It's more like
you're on a journey, you're doing things and they wanna push you, they wanna help you. But if you're just like, hey, can you help me? It's not the same. It's more like you're going somewhere. For example, the first experience of that for me was three or four years ago when I was doing memes every day. Because that's one of the reasons I got big on Twitter initially. I was creating one meme per day.
Daniel (41:35)
Yeah. Yep.
No, no, exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (41:57)
and about startups, about marketing, the need for marketing. And one guy who had a startup and it was going nowhere for like six months and he saw one of my memes about marketing and it hit him and he was like, it really like got him. And then he switched his whole strategy and he went from struggling to making like millions. And he just said, hey, where can I send you $1,000? You know.
Daniel (42:24)
There you go, wow.
Dagobert Renouf (42:25)
And
I said, what? Okay. I said, so I gave him my Bitcoin cause I was into that, you know, and he just sent me $1,000 in Bitcoin. And, you know, that was.
Daniel (42:27)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, that's fascinating.
So here's my lesson from these stories, that is that it's quite there to have someone tell you, give me your PayPal or your Bitcoin, whatever, for me to send you a thousand dollars. But if you have something slightly relevant, like you said, right, if you have a small product or course or a tool or whatever, right, or a newsletter or a subscription button or even a SaaS, right, I mean,
Dagobert Renouf (42:50)
courses, yeah, products.
Daniel (43:03)
I buy things from another in the makers, know, Tony is a great example. I mean, you know, Tony, right, of typing minds. ⁓ I bought, I think I bought everything that he's ever done. Same reason. Some of them I use when he has Blackmagic, for example, Twitter, I used it a lot. not that. For a long time, the screenshotting tool is still installed. I still use it very often. Typing mind, I never really got into it for some reason. don't know. I default to the other, to the native.
Dagobert Renouf (43:15)
you
Yeah, I used that too for a long time,
Daniel (43:32)
AI apps, but I have dev utils even there again, like I don't use it, it's, again, I reflect on my own behavior. I really like the person, I want to support him and the tools are slightly relevant to me again, like it's not like he's doing something about some industry that I have nothing to do. In that case, probably I wouldn't buy it. would feel almost like a waste of, I mean, I don't know, feel weird, but these are something relevant.
Dagobert Renouf (43:32)
Yeah, me too, yeah.
Yeah.
But the key
is to have something to sell that's easy. Because for example, when I had the previous startup Logology, it didn't make sense for people to buy a logo if they didn't need it. So if they had no other way to support me, they couldn't. Then when I had the Twitter course, much easier. And so we still need something that's easy to buy. And for example, with Launch Day, it's not that easy to buy. I mean...
Daniel (44:04)
Yes.
Exactly, yeah.
Yes, Yep, they found something. Exactly, Yeah, absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (44:23)
like you, can sponsor, which is thank you actually, but like that's awesome. That's one way to support, but you know, that's cool what you're saying, because I'm like, okay, I need more small, like $30, you know, I'm doing thing for my wedding suit, I realize it was too expensive, like $300 minimum. And so I'm gonna do one spot that isn't selling yet, it's on my heart, like on my chest. And I'm gonna actually make a QR code and...
Daniel (44:25)
Yes. Yep.
That's
Dagobert Renouf (44:52)
you pay what you want and you're on the page of this QR code. So you can pay 20 or 30 or something. I think that's gonna be an easy entry point that can be cool. Just an idea like, yeah.
Daniel (44:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Very cool. Yes, yes, Yeah.
No, no, very good. And
I think the answer to this is diversification. Again, this food vendor idea, you might have things that are selling a lot, but maybe you make little profit. There might be other things that sell less frequently, but they have maybe better margins and things like that. I think it's important for us to take this attitude of you might still have the harder cells that... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (45:21)
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (45:30)
you you need to find people in the right time that they're launching a product or whatever. But I think it helps a lot to in your portfolio, right? Things that, because there's like funnel dynamics again, especially when you're getting customers from your own audiences, right? There's like, there's this whole spectrum of people who maybe, someone who just followed you yesterday, who never knew who you were, but until yesterday, they're going to be a very different.
than someone who's been following you for five years and you've connected and you talked and you DM'd and there's all the spectrum in between, right? So it's unlikely that someone is going to discover Daggerbert today and immediately jump on sponsoring launch day or launching day. They might need someone, but they might sign up for a newsletter or maybe go to do something free or buy a $5 product or whatnot. ⁓ It helps a lot, think.
Dagobert Renouf (45:58)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (46:25)
You know, you see this, I don't know, maybe to stretch this analogy too much, but even like with celebrities, example, or sports or athletes or whatever, you see, I'm a big Formula One fan, I Formula One drivers, of course, make a lot of money from their teams, but it's like merchandises and sponsored events and whatnot. It's like the whole business is diversified around from selling, you know, $20 caps to, you know, thousands of dollars for tickets at the events.
Dagobert Renouf (46:53)
VIP, yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Daniel (46:55)
to
VIPs and all this sort of structure, there's almost something for everything. Even if you want to go watch a Formula One race, have the general admissions with a hundred bucks and your grandstands are thousand and VIPs are 10,000 and you find something for everyone. And I think it's good if in the Indies start to embrace this because of course, you know, there's many examples of people who did one thing and it worked well. Yes.
Dagobert Renouf (47:18)
Wait, I want a brand shout. Did you like the movie?
Because I know you're big into Formula One. You liked it?
Daniel (47:22)
I did, I did, I did. Yes, I did.
It was a typical feel-good movie. You didn't watch it yet? Yeah, yeah, or you did.
Dagobert Renouf (47:29)
Yeah, I
liked it. I liked it a bit less than Top Gun Maverick, which was from the same guy. I think it was a little bit too... a little bit too... I was gonna say too American, you know, too simple. But it was really good. It was really good. Yeah, you feel good.
Daniel (47:33)
Then you... Maybe two, yes. My kids said the same thing actually. Yeah.
Maybe I,
Yes. Yeah, it's that kind.
I like this art form of, you you take something like top grand, you know, planes or cars and you build a bit of a story around it. But I like, I'm enjoying these sort of feel-good movies, happy ending, you know. Maybe it was a bit too long, at least for my kids. Me too, too. Yes, yes. But they don't. Yeah. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (47:56)
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, at some point, I mean, it's I'm not going to spoil, but you think that one of the guys is dying because there's an accident. And I almost wish he did. I'm like, that
would have been more interesting story. But anyway. OK. Yeah.
Daniel (48:15)
More dramatic, yes, yes. It's funny. It's like Top Gun 1 versus
Top Gun 2. Actually, we were just discussing this with my kids because in Top Gun 1, there is the guy dying, right? His body and the stories mostly about that. But in Top Gun 2, it was more just happy ending, just tensions and then... Yeah, yeah. But no, no, it was good. I enjoyed it. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (48:25)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's always like this now, yeah.
Still good, yeah. But a bit sad though that
movies now, I feel like the bar, I'm sorry, I'm just completely branching, but like the bar for movies is lower now. So I think like, you know, there's less, you know, I think this movie would have been less exciting, you know, 20 years ago. I mean, except the technical part. But now we're like used to like this kind of shit.
Daniel (48:47)
Yeah, it's...
I think what's happening. ⁓
I think there's an interesting theme here, which actually might be related to what we're discussing. This is related, in my opinion, to why almost all websites look the same and why all houses almost look the same and all cars look the same and whatnot. It's like, there's so much uncertainty in business. What do users and customers really want? And once you start to see something that's working, companies and businesses start to double down on the same thing. So if they start to see...
Dagobert Renouf (49:31)
Yeah.
Daniel (49:32)
you know, cars that are in this boxy shape selling more, everyone starts doing the same thing. if houses here in America are very typical, they're all the same shade of grey on the inside, all the same shade on the outside, they're all the same, it's very hard to find, very neutral. And I think Hollywood is actually a very interesting, very rigorous book written about 20 years ago called The Hollywood Economics by Guy R. Devaney.
PhD economics, very interesting person. Yeah, he's very much into health and fitness as well. was like paleo. So it's funny, he branched into another field of science. That's guy, Yes, yes, R. Devaney. I don't know if he's still alive. He must be probably in his 90s now. He was super fit guy even like in his 80s, like ribbed six pack, very fascinating individual. But anyway, he studied economics, sorry, he studied the Hollywood industry incredibly rigorously. And he basically realized that
Dagobert Renouf (50:03)
yeah, I know this guy, yeah.
yeah, yeah, this guy, I see. I know someone who knows him. Yeah, okay, whatever, yeah.
Yeah, yeah,
Daniel (50:32)
There was this statement by a screenwriter who said in the 60s, like in Hollywood, nobody knows anything. At most people are just making educated guesses. And the book was basically based on that statement. Is it really true that people are just basically, you know, guessing? Right. And the conclusion was that it's basically, yes, no, nothing can predict the profitability of a movie, not the marketing budget, not the production budget, not the list of star actors, not the directors, whatever. I mean,
Dagobert Renouf (50:47)
Yeah.
Daniel (51:01)
We might think, oh, if this director is doing a video is going to be a sure success, but in terms of profit, at least, it's very hard to predict. The only thing that seems to be a reliable predictor was the sequels, right? And this is why you keep seeing sequels one after the other, because if Top Gun 1 was successful, chances are that another version of it, right, try to keep as much as possible the same. Same actor, same soundtrack, same...
Dagobert Renouf (51:16)
Yeah, yeah
Daniel (51:30)
similar storyline, you're much more likely to succeed compared to some other random thing. And you start to see this. In fact, the FR movie, they're already talking about, because it seems to be doing well, they're already talking about a sequel. I think this... Yes, Yeah, yeah. The Shetir cast, maybe, yes. Maybe, maybe. But I think there's something important here for Cindy's as well, because...
Dagobert Renouf (51:45)
It's gonna be F2. That would be funny, like the sequel. And then it's like, shit, your cars. And then it's like, FE, and then it's like, whatever.
Daniel (51:59)
There's a balance between ⁓ creativity and novelty and following something that works. ⁓ You can't be too bland because then you're not interesting. ⁓ But I think it's good to recognize there are certain patterns that are more likely to work for some reason. We don't even want to understand them. This is also why I think a lot of SaaS pricing is all very similar. $29 a month, that kind of thing, the same patterns and whatnot. I would say...
Dagobert Renouf (52:24)
Yeah.
Daniel (52:27)
I would encourage people, don't try to be too creative with this stuff, keep it easy, let people be familiar.
Dagobert Renouf (52:33)
And you know, that's why we were a bit
arguing about on Twitter because I noticed, because with my previous startup, I had a big... Do you still have some time? I don't want to keep you too long if you... You're fine? Cool, okay. Because I love doing it more like Joe Rogan style now and just talking. And you know, we were arguing... I not arguing, but like... Because yeah, I had a burnout with my previous startup and since I'm back...
Daniel (52:43)
I do, no no, I have a lot of time, happy to go over, yes yes.
Yeah, yeah, let's talk.
Dagobert Renouf (53:03)
I'm like, I need to do something that I enjoy. you know, I need to, and all this shit bores me. Like, you know, for example, this movie, which I enjoy, I'm still like, where the fuck is the creativity? I miss it. It's the same with music. It's the same with like, where is the, you know, the visionary, the fun shit, like where you fail a lot, but you also have crazy new shit. like I remember like when I was a kid, that was like the Tim Burton movies.
Daniel (53:18)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (53:31)
That was insane. Like the Tim Burton movies, the, you know, people never seen that. You know, you don't have anything like that. And so, and it's the same with products, I feel, because the way I see it, I know what I'm saying is the opposite of what you should be doing. I know you shouldn't see it like way, but I see it a bit as like an art and I know it's not good for business. I'm aware of this, but I'm seeing also for me, if I don't have this, and I know it's like that for a lot of people.
Daniel (53:52)
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (54:00)
Like people are not just like perfectionists for the sake of perfectionism. It's because there's also this desire to make something. There's like this creativity drive. You you want to create something. It's not just like entrepreneurship. I guess you have a spectrum also between pure entrepreneurship and pure arts and you can be in between. And I'm, you know, very much in between. you know, and for launch day, that's what I was doing. You know, I was spending, I mean.
Daniel (54:08)
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (54:28)
There was other reasons I didn't launch. I was still struggling with kind of like my burnout recovering and everything. But there was also this thing of like, I don't give a shit of making another product hunt. It has no interest to me, no value. And so I had to think for quite a bit of like, how do I make something different? And I'm not saying it's like a huge success or anything, but at least I have a proposition. And now people can give a shit about it or not, but like it's something.
Daniel (54:33)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (54:56)
And I want to do this. Now, at the same time, I really don't think yet I can make a lot of money with it. I don't think so. That's kind of depressing to me. But at the same time, I have this... So now I'm to think, okay, maybe I can find another way to make money. But anyway, but like there's this thing of like... Man, it has so much... I don't know, like it's good for me to have done this. I feel like I have some purpose, you know?
Daniel (55:04)
Hmm.
Yes. No, no, no, very interesting. Look, I really believe nowadays that it's very... You get a big advantage if you know yourself well. I think this is something that age helps you with, but I think you also need to be retrospective and thinking about what you like and what gives you energy and whatnot.
Dagobert Renouf (55:24)
I don't want to talk too much because I'm curious to hear your feedback on that, you know.
Yeah.
Daniel (55:52)
And I think it's very important to recognize what it is and be honest with yourself because sometimes we fool ourselves, oh, this is really what I want, but it's not really true. And I think generally speaking, I default to, I would be more inclined to follow, doing the things that give me energy, I'm passionate about, and so on and so forth. And of course you can't be too naive, and I think the realities of things then lets you balance things out, you can't continue to, it's like,
perfectionism, but if you want to launch something at some point, you to the line and launch it. ⁓ I think you described it well. It's probably entrepreneurship here. There's like the strategy part, which is a bit more of like playing chess or poker, like just seeing the opportunities and you're placing bets and whatever. And then there's the artistic and creative part, which you can express in the product, you can express in the marketing side as well, and sort of how you promote things and in many different ways.
Dagobert Renouf (56:49)
Thank
Daniel (56:50)
And maybe you can express, which I, it a bit probably how I'm feeling. I feel like right now in this phase of my life, I'm seeing the entrepreneurship side more strategic again, like, you know, placing bets and the pure definition of entrepreneurship, I think is like using your resources, which is your time and money and assets to place them strategically in a way that can return the best return on investment.
Dagobert Renouf (57:06)
Yeah.
Daniel (57:17)
where I think I'm expressing more my creative side with hobbies, essentially, unrelated to my business. You know, I'm almost all my spare time. I'm thinking around the house. I mean, I like a lot interior design and modeling and building stuff physically. least in this phase of my life, maybe it will change over time, I'm basically getting much more. It's funny, right? I mean, because I've been fascinated by software and computers and things forever, basically, as I was a kid. But now...
Dagobert Renouf (57:31)
Yeah, okay.
Daniel (57:46)
If I make a desk and I'm here, I made this whole office where I'm in. I I built it from the start up. Every time I opened the door and go into it, there's just some feeling, my, I built this thing, I'm going inside it.
Dagobert Renouf (57:58)
Is there any
way for you to show us? Or is it gonna be...
Daniel (58:01)
Unfortunately not really because my
camera is fixed but there's nothing really much I mean it's a very small box I mean not really anything but it's still ⁓ It's it's my box exactly right and every little detail like deciding the door like I chose it I taught taught taught about it Why should it be should the door be this way should it open that way should it be this big should be
Dagobert Renouf (58:05)
Okay.
No but still, it's your box that you made, and it's Coolbox.
and you were looking super
deeply into the wood and the wood quality, I remember something.
Daniel (58:24)
And exactly, I
built this in my garage. So I have a three car garage and I took a part of it. It's funny because I have a three bedroom house and I have three kids and we have guests sometimes. yes, the American guests. But basically I used to, yes. But at one point I basically got kicked out of my house because I had an office in one of the bedrooms and I basically got pushed out. There was no space for me so I needed to.
Dagobert Renouf (58:36)
So three cars, know, the American way. Yeah, three rooms, three cars. Three bathrooms, three cars. Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Daniel (58:54)
make something. But anyway, what I'm saying is like, I'm finding much more satisfaction now with doing something like this rather than pixel perfecting, say, a landing page or whatever. still find some, I still find joy there, but again, like opportunity costs. if I had infinite time, I would do everything to the max, you know, in every dimension. So I basically, I think I would encourage people to try to discover what's really
Dagobert Renouf (59:06)
Yeah.
Daniel (59:22)
drives them. If you really get the satisfaction of pixel perfect landing pages and whatever, would say use that to your advantage. I think it will translate to others. There are a lot of, we talked about Tailwind, the Adam Whetton guy. I don't know if he agrees. To the max, it's like this obsession even with the Tailwind class names and whatever. You can see the thoughtfulness of why did he choose MB4 instead of like,
Dagobert Renouf (59:28)
Yeah.
Yeah, he used that to the max. Yeah, he capitalized to that. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (59:52)
what he did wasn't that novel, these sort of CSS framework, bootstrap and other things were already similar. He wrote CSS, ⁓ But you can see the thoughtfulness in everything he does. You can see it nowadays that he's still refining things and things that I'm happy with. The books. it's, and I think, customers and...
Dagobert Renouf (59:57)
He basically rewrote CSS now, it's like the new CSS basically, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, everything, the books, the UI kits, everything, yeah.
Daniel (1:00:17)
Whoever is following sees that. It doesn't seem like he's forcing himself to do it. He's doing it because he really, really wants it. But still, I think it's good to recognize that he wasn't that naive. just didn't just say, it's funny because I was following him at the time in 2018, I think, where Tailwind as an open source framework was really becoming popular. There was all these companies using it, but he wasn't making any money from it. ⁓ Just open source. And he was building in public and reasoning in public and thinking like,
How can I make money out of this thing? know, typical open source business models are very difficult or very enterprising. Paid support and different licenses and whatever he was reluctant to do that. yeah, and support and whatever. I think he started to realize that wasn't in his wheelhouse. That wasn't something he was like neither interested nor probably experienced to do. And then he stumbled on this team's business, right? And basically.
Dagobert Renouf (1:00:57)
And then you have to hire a shit ton of people, like it's a completely different game. Yeah.
Daniel (1:01:13)
I'm paraphrasing a little bit because it's from memory, but he realized, you know, people are paying $200 to basically buy a bunch of WordPress themes or things like that. sort of that idea, I think, evolved to what if this becomes like a monetization play for Taylor when we have like these components and people buy them for 200 bucks and whatever. And it's fascinating to see how then when you, you he had this artistic side, but he still needed to...
Dagobert Renouf (1:01:21)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:01:42)
be then a bit strategic, right, with how he places his moves in terms of how to make money out of this thing. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:01:48)
Yeah, I think before Tailwind or
at the same time there was a book he made like about design. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:01:54)
design, the factoring UI which made it really well. So
I think the last public update that he posted on Twitter was like four million dollars. Can you imagine like a PDF? It's quite incredible when you think about it.
Dagobert Renouf (1:02:03)
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, I wanted to talk about that earlier. It's funny how,
you you talk about normal books and a normal book is going to be maximum, at least in France, like 30 euros. But now we're all selling PDFs for 100, 200. I think it's an interesting thing. Like when you make something so precise, it's, I just find it interesting that people don't mind paying so much for a PDF, but you wouldn't buy a
Daniel (1:02:12)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:02:35)
book for like 50 euros in the store, like a normal. And I don't actually know why, but I noticed that, you know, that's just interesting to me.
Daniel (1:02:38)
Yes.
I
think the answer to that was I might be mistaken, but I think he still had the base version of it that was something like that, 39 or something like that in terms of the refactoring UI book. don't know if it's still refactoring. There we go, let's do it.
Dagobert Renouf (1:02:59)
Let me check. I'm gonna do it Joe Rogan style and share my screen. Wait, let me do that.
Let me do it. Okay, share.
Daniel (1:03:11)
Let's play sing.
Dagobert Renouf (1:03:14)
do that I'm sharing mine
Daniel (1:03:19)
Yeah, I see.
Dagobert Renouf (1:03:20)
Okay,
refactoring UI. Make your IDs awesome without a designer. Very good. Value prop. it's in the blue background thing, I think. I remember. Yeah, there. Yeah, you see? Basic, you know, just the PDF. And I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just fascinated by how we have changed. ⁓ You know, this economy has changed. Like this info product economy is completely different pricing.
Daniel (1:03:26)
Or is the pricing?
Yeah, it's in the bottom, in the bottom, yeah, yeah. There you go. But so it's still actually, I was long, I was long. It's still 99, you're right, you're right. Yeah, but, but I... Yeah.
the anchor, like yeah, to...
Dagobert Renouf (1:03:50)
and it's okay. I guess it's because it's more like, it's ⁓ sort of B2B, because it's like professional, but...
Daniel (1:03:50)
Yes, yes, yes.
Probably,
yes, probably. I would still advise caution to people ⁓ doing something like this because I think these anchors are real, right? I think it's... ⁓ I think you might be onto something. Maybe it's a bit more B2B. I think it's also, we can't forget all the goodwill that Adam has accumulated over the years. And I think also he broke the anchor. For example, here the bullet point includes three videos and whatever. There's a bit of like, this doesn't feel like a book. But yeah, like it's like...
Dagobert Renouf (1:04:22)
No, yeah, you can boost it a little bit. But yeah,
that's the point. It doesn't feel like a book, maybe, yeah.
Daniel (1:04:27)
It
doesn't feel exactly like a book, it's more of a, even the fact that has that type of landing page, it almost feels like a different kind of product. I I would advise caution because I think it's helpful to recognize where the anchor points are. This is the famous iPhone app challenge, right? No, like, no, no, no, so there's like price anchors. Like let's say you want to sell ⁓ an iPhone app, right?
Dagobert Renouf (1:04:45)
What do you mean ⁓ anchor point?
Daniel (1:04:54)
Um, on, on the app store, it's very hard to like to sell something for, you know, probably more than $10. I mean, it's very rare to see something. This was intentional, I believe. I mean, there's like, you know, Apple, when they started the app store, they encouraged or almost forced developers to price, uh, you know, apps low 99 cents, one 99, that kind of thing, because they felt that was the best way to boost the economy. There was a famous.
lawsuit when Steve Jobs was still alive between Apple and Amazon about ebooks when ebooks were becoming a thing, I think in 2010 or so. Bezos, I think, wanted to price them at $9.99 and Steve Jobs wanted to price ebooks at $12.99 because at the time nobody knew how much, what should be the price of an ebook? Like a book without a physical cost. I mean, you're not shipping anything or printing pages. Should it be 99 cents? Should it be $1? Should it be...
Dagobert Renouf (1:05:33)
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:05:54)
the same price and they had this opportunity which I think both felt like this is the time to set the anchors. Like what would we make people feel is the appropriate price for a book and Bezos had this famous quote where he says, you know, we're not just competing with other books, we're competing with Netflix and with people browsing the internet and whatever. We need to price low otherwise we're going to lose. And anyway, Jobs believed that there needed to be...
Dagobert Renouf (1:06:04)
Mm.
Daniel (1:06:19)
a big fat margin. anyway, I think Apple lost it was a bit of a price fixing scandal at the time, but I forget the details. anyway, what I'm saying is like, it's good to recognize like the Tailwind story again, I think was interesting because Adam noticed that people were paying about 100 to $100 to download WordPress themes. Now again, in pure economic theory.
Like what should the price of a WordPress team be? Like, who knows? It's not like there's no real cost. Like, I mean, it's just a piece of software. But money was changing hands at this price. So instead of trying to examine why or what not, let's try to stay the same because he could have gone. I mean, what was interesting for Taylor was should be a subscription pricing. Should it be $99 a year? Like this was, it had lots of podcasts about it and he keeps.
Dagobert Renouf (1:06:51)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Daniel (1:07:14)
reiterating that he's pretty convinced that he would probably, they would probably made less money if they did some form of recurring. Of course, it's hard to prove. It's a bit like with me with the small bus community as well. It was the same.
Dagobert Renouf (1:07:24)
But I think it's because
there was also a huge obsession with recurring. Now it's a bit less. There was this obsession with like, we need to be recurring. But some products, just doesn't make sense. Like, why would you be, you know, and it needs to be like, people are not gonna buy any bullshit, like any recurring if it doesn't make sense.
Daniel (1:07:31)
Yeah, that's true.
Dagobert Renouf (1:07:47)
There's no reason. If you can get all the assets in one go, you're not going to buy your course at $9 a month if it's just a course. You watch once.
Daniel (1:07:52)
Yes. Yeah, almost
nobody like him, you know, before we talked about like this easy to sell product, the impulse buy product, it's almost never happens with telecaro link products. I mean, it's very hard to impulse buy a subscription. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:08:03)
Yeah.
I see it with launch day because with launch day, know,
my strategy is like, like my angle is I want to get people sales, you know, it's not my main thing. It's mostly community, but like I, I know how to get sales. So I'm trying and I notice when people give. So the first launch date was really bad in terms of sales, but then I started doing okay, 48 hours to get the deals and even the discount expire after 48 hours and
Daniel (1:08:13)
Yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:08:34)
I noticed people who give lifetime deals, not just like nine a month instead of 20 a month, people who give a lifetime deal, they have the most sales. Because it's like, it's very, that's probably why AppSumo only does that and it's still successful. ⁓ And yes, there's this, yeah, go ahead.
Daniel (1:08:52)
This is good.
No, no, this is very good observations. And in fact, I would encourage people to think, know, marketing, when you think about it, it's all human. It's basically all human psychology. It's like trying to recognize what motivates people, what creates a sense of urgency, what makes something valuable. And it's funny for many of us, like who started in computers.
It's a very different thing because when you're trying to convince a computer to do something, which is basically what software programming is, right? I mean, you want the computer to do something. It's a very different world because they're like, it's logic and math and bits, right? mean, one way or another, you're going to find a way to do it, right? And you keep peeling the onion and you get there. But with humans, you is just this cloud of like, nobody knows again, like the Hollywood economics place. Nobody knows anything. This is
Dagobert Renouf (1:09:44)
Yes.
Daniel (1:09:45)
Again, like in hindsight to being... Exactly, that's why it's a complex system, absolutely. And perfect example, perfect example.
Dagobert Renouf (1:09:46)
And it's like, and it's a human is also a part of other humans and everything, you know, it's like the weather, it's like the weather, you cannot predict the weather, you know.
Daniel (1:09:56)
This is again like from my F1 ⁓ sort of interest. Weather during F1, this is a big deal because if you can time the change of wet and whatever and...
These teams with like, you know, billion dollar budgets, they just still have no clue when is it going to rain in the next two minutes in this spot. Like we're not trying to predict the weather of next week. And these guys like put helicopters and zones and have people. And at the end of the day, it's like when it starts falling, that's when we know. But it's like you said, like this is a field of science called complexity systems. That's where ⁓ computers, believe it or not, even though we think computers are
Dagobert Renouf (1:10:09)
and everything.
You cannot be sure.
Yeah, you're just like this.
Daniel (1:10:37)
complicated, they're not in that field. Biology is in that field, know, markets, the economy is in that field, the weather is in that field, you know, but computers and rockets and physics and this stuff, they're relatively simpler, because we can reason about them. Interactions again, with marketing, yeah, this is like, there's like the snowball effect, this like this famous saying from
Dagobert Renouf (1:10:44)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's not all these complex interactions that are changing. Yeah.
Daniel (1:11:04)
thousands of years ago, the success brings with it more success, right? Because ⁓ you get some testimonials, it encourages more sales, it's more FOMO and what not. And you could have all the data, all the advantages, you can do all the things, right? And if you don't get that whatever thing that nobody knows what it is. And this, think to me, makes it, this realization makes it... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:11:09)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:11:36)
sort of allows me to attach less feelings to the projects in terms of their outcomes. I still want to be proud of what I'm doing. That's for me, right? I don't want to feel, I want to have a narrative that I'm proud of. I'm doing my best shot with the resources and time limits that I have. But if something doesn't work or doesn't what is expected, it's just one of these things that is like the weather. Like I thought it was going to rain and it rained and...
is beyond my control. And even with the successes like I was telling you before, like the Ed West book, I'm sure if I were to go back in time and do everything the same, the same words, launch at the same time and whatever, there would probably be a universe where it would only have made $10,000 or something like that. I think I was incredibly lucky that some very high profile people just endorsed it, they tweeted it, I retweeted them, I put them in the landing page.
Dagobert Renouf (1:12:23)
Yeah, it could have gone differently, yes.
Daniel (1:12:31)
And that's of even more form of your more sales and whatnot. Now, how do you replicate that? I don't know.
Dagobert Renouf (1:12:36)
There's something,
one thing I really learned with doing Logology for five years and then doing my Twitter course and my Twitter course which took me five months and Logology took me five years and the Twitter course made more money in three months. ⁓
The big thing I learned that I'm trying to have now is you need something that people can buy now. Because if you have a, if you, people have to think, when do I need it? Then it's, and because people say, I mean, we say, of course it's easier to sell than assess. But I think the main reason is because of course you can buy now and use any time you can, you don't have, you don't lose anything by buying it now.
Daniel (1:13:24)
Yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:13:25)
you know, ⁓ a logo you need to wait until you're ready, like whatever, or like even launch day, it's not really good in that sense because you need to have something to launch. Like I have many people saying, I want to be on launch day, but I have nothing to launch. you know, so that's not good in that sense. And I remember after, before ⁓ giving up, you know, and stop working on launch day, on Logology, I had reworked the whole product.
Daniel (1:13:33)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:13:53)
for, I mean, had thought of reworking it so that it could be bought at any time. And instead of selling a generated logo, we were selling you a package that was actually twice more expensive, like, you know, 149 or 200. And you could use it whenever you want and you can buy it. So like, if you have Black Friday, people can buy it at Black Friday and use it six months later. And they have guides, they have everything to do their branding and their design and whatever.
Daniel (1:14:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:14:19)
And even if the product is still kind of a vitamin, still not a painkiller, still not gonna make probably lots of money, it's 10 times better and 10 times easier to sell. And you know, that's like something I keep thinking about, like it doesn't have to be a course, it can be a SaaS. But that's why I think lifetime deals work mostly. But your product also needs to be like, like for example, somebody who's selling, like before you today, I interviewed someone for a social media post scheduler.
Daniel (1:14:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yes
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Yes. Yep.
Dagobert Renouf (1:14:50)
you're probably gonna need that. If you need that, you need that for a long time. So if he does a lifetime deal, you can buy it. But if you do some specific thing, ⁓ I don't know, like for example, somebody, because he saw I was getting married on Twitter, he gave me for free his SaaS to use for my wedding. Like that guest can use for the guest list, I forgot exactly. ⁓ But like, even though I will need it, it's like, cause it's a one time thing.
Daniel (1:14:56)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (1:15:19)
it's harder to make the decision.
Daniel (1:15:20)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. No,
no, no, no. 100%. Look, I think I would encourage Indies especially to index, at least to think about this, it's important. I wouldn't necessarily jump to the conclusion that you must do this, because again, I think the ideal would be to have different things. For example, the SmallBest community almost like as a product itself has a bit of both. I mean, it is a bit...
time-based as well because in fact I would say the most people join when some life event happens. Unfortunately, many of them are like layoffs or sets of layoffs on some uncertainty at work. I think it's a very common market of there's something happening at their work ⁓ and they're now thinking like what do they do and someone recommends hey you should join small bets or they have been following me for like this is a very common thing. They've been following me for years.
Dagobert Renouf (1:16:02)
Mmm.
Daniel (1:16:17)
they never really joined, but then something happens, either they become, you know, they got fed up with work or they're like sets of layoffs or whatever, and they remember, maybe I should join small bets and start to figure out how to do, how to get started and whatever, doing something on my own. So there is that timing aspect, but there's also, I think, you know, it is conducive to some instant gratification. I mean, you can pay and you get something now and like you said, like you're not losing anything, right? ⁓
I think it caters also to people who are just curious. want to see what's happening and what can I get there and I will have it forever. Again, it's very different if it was a subscription. I think I would lose a lot on these because I think people are way more reluctant. Even if they know they can cancel immediately, the subscription makes it feel like a commitment. Whereas now this makes it feel like, you know, the best testimony that I'd like to receive is this is the gift that keeps on giving because
Dagobert Renouf (1:17:04)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:17:15)
I have people who paid for small bets in October 2021, almost four years ago now. And they paid once, they got something, and hopefully they felt like they got what they paid for. But over these four years, they kept getting new classes, new events, new things, new bonuses. there were big things for a long time. And even those, then their course, think, that at some point I stopped doing them because they...
Dagobert Renouf (1:17:32)
Yeah, the big thing with small bits was like the classes getting, you know content
Daniel (1:17:43)
attendance started to diminish and like economically I felt like they weren't making sense anymore. Maybe I was just thinking recently maybe we should bring them up. We're doing now experimenting with the Twitter spaces, the apps, which probably were a bit better I think in terms of again, it's interesting again, but with these things, like what changed? again, that class experiment was interesting because
Dagobert Renouf (1:17:57)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:18:10)
I was repeating things, so I had almost like a good A-B test. ⁓ Not even an A-B test, like about ⁓ the production of the same thing with new groups of people. And you could see the trends changing. My speculation is that, because I started this during the almost peak of the pandemic, where culture were different.
Dagobert Renouf (1:18:31)
Yeah, peak of Indie hiking.
Daniel (1:18:34)
I think of everything, people with more spare time, wanting to, for a community and being in the same space, to more recently where people attend more busy schedules. There was, think, something called Zoom fatigue as well, which, you know, a lot of people nowadays are in Zoom meetings all the time and, the last thing they want is like another Zoom call and they're sitting down and whatever, right? So it was probably a factor. Yeah, so it's picking up, which...
Dagobert Renouf (1:18:51)
Yeah.
I think real life events now is a bit more like where it's going.
Daniel (1:19:04)
Which is interesting, it's something that is not really compatible with me organizing, right? So I'm like, when I'm talking about like what we like doing or whatever, probably something that's really would zane all my energy is organizing some real life in-person event. my God, like this, I'm probably the worst person to do that. So I wouldn't even try myself. I might be interested in maybe having someone organize it for me because I do see the benefits. And if I were to join as a guest or as a speaker or something,
Dagobert Renouf (1:19:14)
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:19:33)
but me organizing it, finding the venue, calling places, figuring out what to do... Not me.
Dagobert Renouf (1:19:37)
Yeah. No, that's event job is
the most crazy job. And you, cause like you respond.
Daniel (1:19:44)
Yeah, but I see people like Mark
Lew and others, like they do these things, and I see like Mark was going and like visited India and he got hundreds of people, even in Paris I think ⁓ a few months ago. I think that's how it started in Paris if I'm not mistaken. I mean, he's French as well, right? So, ⁓ but yeah, so it's interesting. I see him and I get the value, but I say, it's not for me.
Dagobert Renouf (1:19:54)
Yeah, and he did like 1,000 people like crazy.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:20:14)
getting into that space. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:20:15)
Yeah, I want to do that for launch day. think people are, ⁓
because I noticed a lot is the isolation. Like that was for that's for me, but that's for a lot of people on launch day. There's not everybody's in their small town or big town, but usually small, like in whatever country and they don't have indie makers around them. So who the fuck do they talk to? You know, and so I think there's something with live events, 100%. Yeah.
Daniel (1:20:38)
Yeah, too. Yeah.
No, no, absolutely. And this is again, like a mixture and this is what I think all opportunities, small bets, think fundamentally it's like trying to address that problem in a still digital, virtual, asynchronous way. And some people prefer that, but yeah, like there's a market for all these things. The problem certainly exists and it's big and it's big time basically, a big total as it will market globally of aspiring.
Dagobert Renouf (1:20:45)
I want to organize one.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:21:12)
new and aspiring entrepreneurs. how I classify it. People who want to work for themselves or they just started working for themselves and they don't want to do it alone. Huge market and I think there's space for lots of different solutions. What you're doing, what I did with Small Bets, Mark Liu and even Peter Levers. We know Midlis when you think about it. It's a bit like that with a niche. It's a community, again, like with...
Dagobert Renouf (1:21:34)
Nomad, at least, is a community. It's mostly the community. It's a telegram group and yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:21:39)
It's a subset you
would say, I mean, because they're almost all of them, you know, again, like New End, Espionage, and stuff like that, but also they're also traveling, right? And nomading and whatnot, right? So it's probably, again, like a smaller market probably in theory, so.
Dagobert Renouf (1:21:51)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
But it's funny,
it's funny because I think there's probably a good opportunity because it's like, know, everybody wants to build SaaS for developers, which is the worst. I mean, not the worst, but it's a difficult market. And nobody wants to do some boring thing. But if you do some boring thing, you have no competition and you have a huge edge and you can make way more money. And so it makes me think of that. Like we're all like stuck on our computers.
Daniel (1:22:07)
Yeah, that's it.
Dagobert Renouf (1:22:24)
We don't want to organize an event that sounds like so different, you know? But if we do it, then there's such a lack of this that it's going to be successful. Yeah.
Daniel (1:22:27)
Yeah, yeah.
But
it's similar to what you were saying before about in your products you want to express your creativity and create new things. Of course, you need to stretch yourself on certain things and do some boring things and you will do that when you're running your own business for sure. ⁓ But there's a dose and a limit as well.
If you're working in a boring industry, building boring software, doing boring things all the time and whatever, probably you'll suffer in another way. even sometimes, if it, even the money might not be enough or might not compensate sufficiently. it's all that balance. I mean, when think about it, I think the game of life, it's about balancing. This may be... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:23:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, money is not, yeah.
Daniel (1:23:27)
what I dislike about the stereotypical American culture and again, like I wouldn't generalize because America is huge. But there is certainly, think more than Europe, the one dimensionality of life. I worked with people who literally their car is the only thing that matters. Not even money actually, literally they're climbing up the carpet. And again, maybe it was self selective because I was working in a carpet. Yeah, but.
Dagobert Renouf (1:23:32)
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
No, no, I met, even when we
were going to the US a few times, not particularly in tech space, I met many people like that, like some guy, he was working 80 hours a week, and there was nothing else, and I was normal, and he had no time for anything, and he was super overweight and super stressed, but it's okay, like, I'm just saying, it was the whole picture, yeah.
Daniel (1:23:59)
Like that,
Yeah, fair comment.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, they sacrifice everything.
Even sometimes family and everything. I worked with a person which still sort of ⁓ struck me where, you know, she was, think in her mid forties, was like a medium level product manager. Her husband worked at Microsoft. And the first thing she told us when she joined our team is that she's in a phase that she's focusing on her color right now. And she had a son, I think it was like eight or nine.
And she sent her son to her parents in Canada, like on the other coast, right? So like five hours away to stay with his grandparents so that he focused on his school and she and her husband focused on their car and they said, my God, and actually it's like, that's an extreme case, of course. mean, not, not, a lot of people, but it's like, wow. Like, you start to see this, I think even Silicon Valley, right? The tech.
Dagobert Renouf (1:24:49)
Wow.
my god, yeah, that's a bit much, yeah.
Daniel (1:25:11)
Maca of whatever. Again, this is why I try to encourage people to don't fall into this step because in doing my last couple of years at Amazon, there was a bit of a merchant acquisition initiative where I tried to acquire a company in the $40 million range. And we were talking to a of Silicon Valley rejects almost. These are the ones that weren't really exploding, but they were struggling to find the next round of investment. And we were trying to buy them at a good bargain.
Dagobert Renouf (1:25:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:25:41)
And I, again, I was just helping with interviews and due diligence and whatnot. But I met a lot of founders who were, you know, almost like depressing stories. I mean, in their 40s or almost in their 40s, no family, no friends, they're living with a couple of roommates, not really any wealth and not really any prospects of, I mean, they were basically begging for this deal to happen, because
they were now starting to see a chance that their life might change with maybe Amazon acquiring them but it was still nothing, right? And ⁓ sort of make...
Dagobert Renouf (1:26:17)
So mean they were expecting
some adventure from this? From some excitement?
Daniel (1:26:21)
No, no, no, no, they were
basically they were so all in their company like all the for the last 10 years they were just trying to find the next funding ground trying to get, you know, trying to make it work and they sacrificed everything for that. They literally took out of nothing. It's like you were saying unhealthy and unfit, no relationships, no real income and no nothing in the future as well. It's like either this works or
Dagobert Renouf (1:26:30)
Oh yeah, okay, I see, I see.
Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:26:48)
Go big or go bust basically, that is the saying. And usually it's go bust.
Dagobert Renouf (1:26:48)
Yeah.
It can be good because
it pushes you. That's what I did for a few months with Launch Day, you know, because it helps you not procrastinate if you don't have any other choice. But I don't think you can sustain it. know, now I'm like, you know.
Daniel (1:26:58)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, same for a long time. And that's the problem,
of course. I think the burst and LAL's cycle has actually held the problem more natural to how we're wired. I think it's the one dimensionality. To think of yourself like, I just want to grow as fast as possible. I want to climb the color ladder as fast as possible and so on and so forth. So anyway, I've become...
Dagobert Renouf (1:27:15)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:27:32)
DHH actually tweeted about this a couple of days ago. It's like balancing it all. mean, I almost like my ambition has now evolved to, I don't want to just make as much money as possible or like have something as successful or climb the color ladder or like be something by age, whatever. I just want to have a good balance, like the optimum balance. The challenge is like, how do I balance? And by the way, even...
Even a lot of people who have families, for example, say, family first, whatever. Even that is a bit of a lie because we're still sacrificing. I mean, I'm here with you. I could be with my kids. Whenever I'm working, I could be doing something else. So we're always trading off things, right? So I really think like, now what gives me a lot of joy is like, or pride. And I don't get this long all the time, of course, hindsight, but trying to balance everything, right? Like it's a bit of work.
the right amount, amount in my own hobbies just for me, the right amount with my family, the right amount sort of health and fitness and keeping,
Dagobert Renouf (1:28:33)
I want to bounce
back on the kids thing because it's funny. It's always... It's a bit unrelated but...
I was afraid for a long time. Now I'm like completely set. I'm going to get married. We're to have kids. I'm excited about it. That's cool. But for a long time, I was worried because I don't know. It seems like I've seen many people and I think they use kids as an excuse. you know, it feels like sometimes like, you know, no, I can't. have my kids or like, or like the opposite, like I'm doing this for the kids when they're just doing this for themselves. Like, no, I do it for my family. No, but it's, and I think like there's no,
Daniel (1:29:12)
Yeah, for themselves too, too.
Dagobert Renouf (1:29:17)
Why not admit that it's like, we're all selfish and it's not wrong for you to be partially selfish. Your kids need you to be selfish, to be healthy and to lead. Yeah.
Daniel (1:29:23)
You... you... you...
to some degree. Agree?
No, no, I agree, I agree. That's why I think it's important to not just be this naive or idealistic, yeah, like, because like you say, it's all trade-offs and my kids would certainly prefer if I'm playing Minecraft with them 24-7 and whatever. And I joke sometimes and say having kids was the best thing that happened for my career, but it's a bit of a game, like...
Dagobert Renouf (1:29:47)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:29:56)
there's certainly an exaggeration because look, certainly ⁓ takes a lot of energy raising a family, young kids and of course much less time. So that's certainly an impediment to things, but they certainly made it clear to me that everything has an opportunity cost. That if I'm pixel perfecting something, I'm stealing that from something else. Not necessarily from my kids, but it would also be, I could go for a run or I could be...
Dagobert Renouf (1:30:06)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:30:25)
you know, just sleeping sometimes because I'm also under-slept like my all other thing keeps telling me that I sleep score is like 60. So, but basically it allowed me to be productive in an interesting way, not because ⁓ I became faster, but just became a bit more ruthless into saying no to things or deciding where you start getting diminishing returns. This is sufficient. And now I'd rather...
Dagobert Renouf (1:30:30)
Yeah.
⁓ my god, okay.
Daniel (1:30:53)
sleep or workout or go play with my kids or do something else.
Dagobert Renouf (1:30:55)
And it's also,
at least for me, accepting that it's over, we're not gonna do everything. When you get older, you start realizing, there's no chance. I will die and I will be completely incomplete, everything is 100%.
Daniel (1:31:02)
Exactly, There's a limit. I will die.
And when you start thinking
about it, there's not a lot of years and there's not a of months and yeah, it's all related. It's all related. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:31:16)
Yeah, and the older you get, the faster it goes, so you're fucked. like, know, yeah. Wait, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna open this
blind because I'm, it's getting too dark.
Daniel (1:31:26)
I'm
Dagobert Renouf (1:31:27)
If you want you can take a small break.
Daniel (1:31:30)
Yeah, take a zing.
Dagobert Renouf (1:31:46)
Yeah, there's one last thing I wanted to mention and I'm like, you know, I know you offer, think it's 3000 euros and then we can call you whenever you want forever. So there's something like that. Okay, 25.
Daniel (1:31:57)
Yeah, 2500, yes, yes. That's a very interesting
experiment. Happy to talk about it because... Yeah. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:32:04)
⁓ No, actually we could, but I was just saying,
I'm going to use this podcast as my free way to ask you a question if you don't mind. And you even paid me because you sponsor Lodge Day, so that's even better.
Daniel (1:32:12)
Of course, no, no, absolutely. Go ahead. Yes, yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:32:22)
Yeah, so you know for the last few months I was just pushing and pushing and like doing launch day and whatever even if I was running out of money I didn't care I'm like okay I'm doing this
And I didn't want to get distracted by anything. So no freelancing, no job. I always struggled to have a job and at the same time work on my projects. Because then once you have the comfort of a job, I have zero motivation. I'm just chilling. So I was doing this way now, but you know, I'm not sleeping well for a long time because you know, it's still very, very stressful to be running out of money. I don't have like any, ⁓ you know, family backup or anything. So I'm like, ⁓
And so, but eventually I did launch day. I think launch day now it's gonna get me at zero probably, but it's still very stressful because every month I start with like, you know, it's not recurring or anything. So I think it's fine, but still if tomorrow Twitter changes the algorithm, I lose all my engagement. I'm kind of fucked, you know, so I know it's risky. So I don't sleep well because of that. And then I started doing this wedding suit thing and
Daniel (1:33:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (1:33:33)
I made money very quickly. Very quickly, was like, first day, 3K, second day, 2K, next day, and I made like 10K in like one week or something. And fuck, man, I had forgot how that felt, like to just make money. I really forgot. And I almost got crazy last week at some point. was like, fuck. I was like, for a few minutes, I was like...
Daniel (1:33:36)
Yeah
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:33:58)
I don't want to do lunch day anymore. I just want to make money. I just want to get a job and get money because I had forgot this feeling. Anyway, and then I started talking to Lewis from CompAI first lunch day. Probably saw this guy, really funny guy, really cool guy. And I really love this product when I saw the first lunch day, you know, this compliance thing, AI compliance to help you get SOC 2 compliance for your startup.
Daniel (1:34:02)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yep.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yep,
Dagobert Renouf (1:34:28)
really cool. And he offered me a sales job. you know, he said, you're good at this, you know, and like super well paid and shit. And I really believe in the product and everything. And I believe in him. And I think this is sure. This is going to make a shit ton of money. I want to be in the part of it. This is cool. And so now, and he said, you can still work on lunch day, no problem. So I feel even like, well, that sounds perfect. ⁓
Daniel (1:34:33)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:34:56)
And now I'm like feeling almost like I want to do it. And also, you know, it can be an experiment. It can also fail and, you know, not work. fine. It's not like a big attached on both ends. But I'm like, and I think I would enjoy doing it because I can do these calls and I'm not, I'm actually, to me, it doesn't feel like work. So I think I could take, you know, a few calls per day to do sales. Doesn't seem scary.
Daniel (1:35:03)
Mm-hmm.
Yep. Yep.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:35:27)
⁓ And exciting because I never did that in my life. So that sounds cool. I would be learning. ⁓ But it's just now I'm like, you know, it's weird. Like I go in one direction, then I change, then I feel bad because but I know I will keep doing lunch day because now it's not just me now. It's the people like I connected with people. But I don't know. This whole thing is confusing me because I had kind of like buried this need for money.
like the time for pushing because I wanted to get this thing somewhere and now I have got in somewhere now launch day has clarity now it has direction I see the path and I'm gonna keep doing it and now that I finally have the path I feel like fuck I also want some money you know so I don't know it's a bit messy but I just wanted to
Daniel (1:36:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And this is an arrangement where you have a fixed hour. So you work by commission. if I don't have you open to sharing.
Dagobert Renouf (1:36:20)
It would be like a salary
and then mostly commission. Like it would be like there would be a fixed salary and then...
Daniel (1:36:26)
terms of time commitments
at 40 hour work we kind of think or more choose your own time do as much as you can
Dagobert Renouf (1:36:33)
I think, ⁓ so he said he was fine with me doing a lunch day. And I said, you know, for me, it's like at least one day a week where I do all these calls. And he was fine with that. So, you know, he was so busy, like we didn't have time to go into the details yet, but he was, he seems to be very accommodating. But, but I also would like to do, you know, I would also like to, to dive in, you know, I don't want to just do it. I want to.
Daniel (1:36:42)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm asking this.
Yeah,
Dagobert Renouf (1:37:02)
If I do it, I want to help them. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:37:02)
of course. Yeah, take it seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was asking these questions because I'm a big believer now in the, this is something I learned from Taleb. know you've read some Taleb, I know he blocked you, but yeah, yeah. somewhere in his books, has the, he introduces this dose response relationship, which is a concept from medicine.
Dagobert Renouf (1:37:15)
yeah, big fan of Nassim Talebius. Yeah.
Daniel (1:37:26)
which we all know, right? mean, medicine, you don't just take as much as you want, right? There's a curve that if you prescribed, I don't know, aspirin, you know, if you take the right dose at the right frequency, it can treat something. If you take it at the wrong dose and frequency, it can kill you or do nothing. In one day, exactly, right? So does the same thing with wine, right? I mean, if you drink a glass of wine a day, it's very different than you drink 30 glasses in one night.
Dagobert Renouf (1:37:32)
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. One per day for 10 days is not the same as 10 in one take. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel (1:37:55)
even though in the same month you might have consumed the same amount. And I think when it comes to work, it makes a big difference as well. So it might be a matter of finding the right arrangement, the right dose and frequency. And maybe with, you know, it is very hard to do with corporate, you know, again, like the Amazons and Googles, have rigid policies, whatever, but maybe with these small companies, ⁓ which is basically what I did with Gumroad. I mentioned this.
Dagobert Renouf (1:37:55)
Yeah, yeah. Mons, yeah, Yeah.
Daniel (1:38:23)
It was a similar thing. I was in this phase a bit like you. My income was very spiky. I was making some money and making almost nothing the next month or whatever. And I wanted to add a bit more predictability. And I remember Sahil posted a tweet once saying, actually the tweet was about hiring software engineers and they had the footnote said, and at some point I will also want to hire a product manager to help me do whatever. But it was indicated as full time role and I sent him an email.
said, hey, I don't want full time, but I'm willing to do quarter time and we can do, I commit to be available every day, but ⁓ I can probably only dedicate about 10 hours a week, but I can do things asynchronously and whatever. And I said, you know, I know you guys were called already very asynchronous, so maybe it can work. Anyway, long story short, we went on the phone, we sort of agreed a little bit on like, what were the expectations? And I did this for a couple of years, I think it was probably.
very great arrangement for me. think eventually I stopped because Gumroad grew so much at one point. I wasn't able to continue to keep up with everything that was changing at the time. It was a beautiful time. There was the conversation, if I remember correctly, and then Small Bets had already started. was, to be honest as well, focusing more on that. was losing probably a bit of interest as well. But anyway.
Dagobert Renouf (1:39:25)
Yeah.
you would need to be full time probably at this point.
Daniel (1:39:48)
Um, but it was great, a great arrangement and I think I was valuable and I was getting paid $10,000 a month, you know, and it helped put a floor to my spikiness, right? And it stabilized things. Exactly, which I do think like small bets probably would have been harder to start if I didn't have it because maybe I would have chased more speculative. Cause like I told you that small bets was a bit of an in between. It wasn't like that.
Dagobert Renouf (1:40:01)
Exactly. And then you have more freedom to experiment.
Daniel (1:40:17)
course like thing like you buy it and you get it. It was more of a vitamin that many people only joined when they felt like the right timing. So it was more of a launch day like ⁓ situation.
Dagobert Renouf (1:40:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, you sold a lot, but
it's still not easy to sell. That's something to remember.
Daniel (1:40:32)
And this was over time,
like you I had a Twitter course which sold a lot in few months and then died off small bits. It just sells over time, just because the stars need to align with customers being in the right time. ⁓ I'm sure that if the gum noting for me was 20 hours a week or something that was more everyday I needed to explain what I did the day before, I would have hated it and would have lasted long. That's something I always...
Dagobert Renouf (1:40:45)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:41:01)
was reluctant to do. I don't want to have even the obligation to feel like, here's what I did yesterday, here's I'm doing today. No, just let me do my thing. And of course, there's no long-term commitments, month of month, and if it's not working out, no big deal. And maybe this could be the way for you to rearrange it. Maybe you propose something that is like in the right doors for you again to use that metaphor.
Dagobert Renouf (1:41:08)
yeah, 100%, yeah.
Yeah, I think I need to try
first to know the dose because I never did this job of sales. But yeah.
Daniel (1:41:32)
And maybe, yes, and maybe
you find an arrangement that allows you to try those. Maybe you say, hey, just commission only for now, like no sell it so that you eliminate. This, by the way, this is something related very recent. So as you know, I sold small best to Gumroad three months ago.
Dagobert Renouf (1:41:44)
Yeah, I don't mind with that. I don't mind that, yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:41:56)
And part of the deal was, you know, they're acquiring the business, generate cash flow and whatever, but they were also interested in having me part of the team. was very cautious because again, I didn't want to become like an employee, Monday to Friday, and I was very, made it very clear that it wasn't the arrangement. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I'm good at it anymore. just too distracted with many things. So we agreed, we agreed that I'm going to be helping Gumroad, the company.
Dagobert Renouf (1:42:19)
Yeah, yeah, I see.
Daniel (1:42:25)
with ⁓ a little bit like the same models I was doing with that consultation. I opened my calendar to them and said, hey, the team knows what I can be helpful with. Anytime you want me, book a call with me. Happy to spend as much time as you want. We can discuss roadmaps, products, brainstorm, pick you my brain, whatever. I can do certain things. I talked to others of Gumroad creators, whatnot. It was good. And then we said, okay, let's discuss a salary. And Sahil was telling me, here's how much he makes.
And then he was starting to give me a hint of like what he was expecting. And then on the call I said, okay, let me think about it and then get back to you. And I was reflecting on it and I said, you know what? I don't even want a salary because that's going to make it feel like if I'm something every month, I need to be almost like even to myself, right? I want to feel like I did something. You know, I need to justify it. So I said, you know what? I'm just going to have my equity that's going to vest over time. I don't want any salary at all.
Dagobert Renouf (1:43:13)
Yeah, it's how you... Yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:43:24)
So I'm going to get the one time payment for small bets. I'm to get some equity that's hopefully going to be sufficient motivator for me to be helpful to Gumroad because that would make the equity worth it and nothing. Right. So and he actually liked that as well because I think, you know, it aligns as well with the company. It isn't like this fixed cause but most of what I did for me, it sounds counterintuitive to people. Like I negotiated myself out of a salary.
I'm almost certain if I ask for like $10,000 a month or something like that, $120K a year, it will almost like a no-brainer default. Yes. Right. ⁓ But this was part of that realization that for me, like I dislike the, here's what I did this week. I'm giving Gumroad an update every month about small bets, what happened, revenue costs, whatever. But it's about a bit of a...
Dagobert Renouf (1:44:00)
Easy, yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:44:20)
investor update kind of thing. ⁓ But not that... And, you know, this might change, by the way, maybe if my circumstances were different, but right now in this phase of my life, I didn't want that. So anyway, my advice might be to try to maybe to find an arrangement that allows you the flexibility to do this without the feeling burdened by some commitment. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:44:42)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:44:49)
that allows you to experiment with your dosage response, right? And you say, you know what, I'm five calls a week, or I'm spending so much time and this is a good fit. Or maybe you are doing a bit too much and now you need to curb it down. And then maybe you do formalize it to something a bit more structured. Or maybe not, maybe you keep it up like that. But look, I...
Dagobert Renouf (1:44:52)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (1:45:15)
I'm hesitant to strongly recommend because again, like we're different people, but I think if I wear your shoes, I would be very much inclined to say yes to something like this, especially because it's something you've never done. I like the exposing, increasing surface area. Right?
Dagobert Renouf (1:45:28)
Yeah, what I like is I see what's
missing from everything I've done is B2B. Like I really like this B2B enterprise sale. Like it seems the most boring shit used to, but now I'm like, wow, this is a cool product. This is where the market is going. It's exciting for me. And I'm starting to think I can be very good at sales. So I want to practice that. want to try. want to, you know, and I want to get the feeling of closing and getting sales and getting money. That feels great.
Yeah, I think what I liked when he offered me is like the only job is you just like you didn't even have to find clients. It's just like, know, they have Google ads, people come from Google ads, they request a demo, you do the demos 20 minutes, you know, that's it. And you know, he said you do, he said you can do 10 per day and that's it. And because we've launched, I do so many calls on the same day and it doesn't to me and it's I think more tiring because it's like.
Daniel (1:46:21)
Yeah, yeah,
Dagobert Renouf (1:46:26)
you know, most of these last one hour. like, it's like, you know, I really have to get into it. I think with a demo, it's a bit less and it's like he said, it's 20 minutes. And, ⁓ I don't know. It seemed like, cause you know, for a long time, I was struggling to have a job and a side project. Cause it was the same thing. Like it was like, I'm coding during the week and then I have to code in my side project or I'm building a, you know,
Daniel (1:46:48)
Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yes, yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:46:54)
But like just taking a call, it's a completely different thing and it feels like less exhausting, you know, for this.
Daniel (1:46:54)
Yes, it's different. Yeah.
Yes, yes, yes. No, no, I think it's those response again. You were probably overdosing on the coding, right? You were, yes, doing the coding and now you need to do coding as well for other things and changing it's variety, right? It might actually energize you for the coding side, believe it or not. It might make you, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:47:10)
Yeah.
Yeah, like, and also it gives me,
yeah, it reminds me of John Carmack. I'm a huge fan of John Carmack. So creator of Doom. To me, it's so underrated because Doom is to me, it's the most revolutionary game in the history. nobody, everybody talks about Mario or Zelda, which I'm a big fan of, but like, I'm just gonna divert a little bit, like Doom for people who don't know the first Doom, first 3D game, I mean.
Daniel (1:47:23)
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:47:45)
First was Wolfenstein, but that's the same team, that's a few years after. First 3D game, first 3D engine, that was fake 3D, but that was still 3D. First FPS, first game where you see the gun and you shoot at enemies. First multiplayer game, like on local, like on ⁓ wire, like on different computers. First adult, and not adult, not like porn, but like, know.
Daniel (1:47:47)
Mm-hmm. Yep, yep, yep.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yep,
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (1:48:13)
Mature that's how people say in the US in France. We say adult for like first mature theme game with like Hard rock music Monsters blood not just little, you know ⁓ funny creatures ⁓ And the way they distributed man, they distributed it was a free demo shareware. That was also the first thing I mean this game I'm just like
Daniel (1:48:20)
⁓ Yeah, blood and gun, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure, what I thought. Yeah, yep,
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (1:48:40)
I
don't know why it's not first of every list and it drives me insane because I'm a huge fan of this. so anyway, John Carmack, ⁓ one of the co-creators of Doom, he was the coding guy. And so he created this whole engine and then he did this whole career. now he then he was at Oculus and then Meta to drive the VR project. And he's he really has some super interesting thoughts all the time. And he's like super productive. He works like 12 hours a day or something. And he's like like and it's not like
Daniel (1:48:47)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (1:49:10)
to him it's clearly his purpose. He's happy doing that. That's his thing. He doesn't need to, he loves it. But he said he cannot work more than four hours on the same thing. Like so like he can do, I forgot exactly, you know, I probably got it wrong, but it's something like maybe if he does 12 hours, there's gonna be four hours of one type of coding. There's gonna be four hours of something else. And when you do it this way,
Daniel (1:49:14)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:49:38)
you can be way more productive. I mean, in terms of what you can output. Not that it should be the goal, but like if you want to, like if you do four hours of design, two hours of interviews, two hours of coding, it's absolutely different than eight hours of coding. So just saying, bye.
Daniel (1:49:47)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
no, no, it goes back to the advantage you get when you know yourself, that you know your preferences, know, your strengths, your weaknesses, your ideal doses for things. I really think we're all different. So I wouldn't generalize this that I should also do the follower thing. That was, we're all in different spectrums of different things. We just need to discover our own. And I think again, like my book of...
Dagobert Renouf (1:50:16)
Yeah, maybe, yeah.
Daniel (1:50:22)
issue with full-time employment, typical 40-hour Monday to Friday work week, is that it doesn't allow you to experiment with different arrangements. It's usually expected to be 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, week after week, same thing. And like if you like to split your day in a particular way, or like me, I was more like high intensity for a period and then easier, it just becomes harder. And by the way, I understand, it would be very hard to manage people who are less... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:50:45)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:50:52)
predictable, right? So I don't really have better ideas. It's just not good fit for my personality. And for many people probably listening to this and many others. It's good to know that because it's like the analogy again, it's like trying to, you know, plant a palm tree in Alaska, right? mean, you know, technically you could make it work, right? You could put a greenhouse around it, control everything, control the temperature, the humidity, the light.
Dagobert Renouf (1:51:05)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:51:20)
supplement but it's fragile, it's a difficult setup. Whereas if you put the palm tree in its actual environment and the beaches of Florida or whatever, it will just flourish automatically. And I think we need to discover, are we the palm tree or are we the pine tree? And where's our ideal fit? And sometimes we're in a different environment but it's like we're with this greenhouse and glass house and everything.
Dagobert Renouf (1:51:24)
Hmm.
Super easy, yeah.
Daniel (1:51:49)
console to the limit until something breaks and then you know
Dagobert Renouf (1:51:52)
Yeah. What do you
think about this guy who does all his experiments on his body like a Brian... Yeah.
Daniel (1:51:59)
Yeah,
don't know. I think it's interesting, again, that he's doing them on himself. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:52:08)
I think it's super
valuable for the world and for the... As a science project, it's super cool.
Daniel (1:52:12)
Yeah, know, Taleb, for example, attacks him. It's
super interesting because I think there's a decent chance that he does something interesting. even though he's doing so many things that maybe the cause and effect might be a bit difficult to extract. let's say, you know, I think, for example, even the fact that he improves his fitness level so drastically in a short period of time is already interesting, right? Because it's not like he's been an athlete for like
all his life and he has a high VO2 max and whatever. He went from a sedentary career to starting to things seriously and there's already some interesting data points here. generally, I think my general answer is I respect people who experiment on themselves. ⁓ And this is something, however, there's still something that I don't know, that feels a bit...
Dagobert Renouf (1:52:42)
Yeah, no, yeah.
Daniel (1:53:12)
I wouldn't say it's almost again like the DHH had a good thing I think when he was he wasn't talking about him specifically but he said he was talking about people who are optimizing for like this extreme longevity which is probably indicating him it's almost like you don't have the upper it's almost indicates you don't have your priorities right again going back to like the one dimensionality of life if like longevity is the only thing it feels like
Dagobert Renouf (1:53:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:53:42)
And think some people subconsciously notice this. That's why when they criticize him, it's like he's sacrificing so much. People almost feel sorry for him and probably not even a healthy thing to promote as a sacrifice everything for one thing. And again, I wouldn't necessarily jump to a conclusion because I don't know him well. He seems like a nice guy who I know him, who knows him, speaks very highly of him. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (1:53:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's something respectable, know, just like Nasim Taleb thing, but like playing his skin in the game, like it's him. So, you know.
Daniel (1:54:17)
Skinny Game, exactly. It
is him and his experiment on himself. I think what's interesting is that, like what we're saying about you and your project, like he clearly seems passionate about this, right? I mean, it's his thing. I think that transfers to people, right? I mean, you root for him. A little bit like Elon Musk, again, like he's this, again, like he's controversial figure. No, not everyone roots for him, but me, and intrinsically, like...
Dagobert Renouf (1:54:32)
Yeah.
Daniel (1:54:45)
Seeing him excited about launching a rocket and whatever automatically makes me
Dagobert Renouf (1:54:49)
Yeah, you can always recognize anyway,
you know, that like the it's like Brian Johnson, like, you know, he helps push things forward and you can only respect that. that's well, I think that's it. I think we've done it. Yeah.
Daniel (1:55:06)
Cool. Yeah, no. Yeah,
always nice to talk with you, Dago. And congrats on the wedding and congrats on launch day and I'm rooting for you as you know. you it's nice following you. You so you're something I've been following, I don't remember exactly when I started following you, but it's interesting for other people who want to, again, be a bit more building public or whatever you call it. It's nice to follow someone's story as it happens, right?
Dagobert Renouf (1:55:16)
Thank you, I know, yeah, you're...
Daniel (1:55:36)
And this is the opportunity that you could give without really... It doesn't cost you much, maybe a bit of privacy, but you define the line as well, you don't need to talk about everything. But you build that goodwill.
Dagobert Renouf (1:55:36)
Yeah.
Yeah. But you know, that's interesting.
That's interesting you talk about sharing it in real time. Because when I was doing, you before my burnout and I was already tweeting, I was more calculating what I was tweeting and I was more like sharing when there was a lesson to be learned. So I was sharing after. And now I'm just sharing.
Daniel (1:56:09)
Yeah, that defect, yes.
Dagobert Renouf (1:56:14)
But it's more vulnerable because you know I get more people criticizing. I used to have zero haters. I went to 100,000 followers with no haters and now I have some. And that was a bit scary.
Daniel (1:56:15)
the other time.
Yep. Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:56:28)
but I don't know, like there's something...
Daniel (1:56:30)
It's not, it's natural, it's human. This is human. That is why, you know, I think like reality TV had its thing at one point. People like to follow other people's story. Before digital media, it was gossip and just neighbors talking and people just, you know, telling the story of their life. And when you go to the bakery and you talk with the bake and WhatsApp and you talk and whatever. And now we have this opportunity to do it in a bigger scale.
Dagobert Renouf (1:56:42)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel (1:57:00)
And on the internet you're much more likely to find like-minded people and whatnot. So yeah, it's great.
Dagobert Renouf (1:57:04)
But like,
when you do that, what I noticed is then it involves people in your story. Like by tweeting that, okay, I'm gonna struggle to pay for my wedding, then you got called to like, you know, help me with that. And then it made people, and so it changes the whole direction. Because if you wait until you're all clean and pretty and have a good story to tell, it's not the same thing. You don't connect with people and you miss so much opportunity. So yeah.
Daniel (1:57:12)
Absolutely, ⁓
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. 100 %
Yeah, it's true. We talked about several people like Tony Dinh and others. I follow Tony since he was incredibly smart. I he had less than a thousand followers back in the pandemic, 2000 or 2020 or so. ⁓ And I feel... Never? Yeah, probably. But I feel, I've... He was doing... In fact, I discovered that he was doing something with his profile pic with the Twitter API at the time, like changing that...
Dagobert Renouf (1:57:44)
Yeah, yeah. I think he never changes profile picture. No, no, I think of it because I remember it. It's the same profile pic.
Yeah,
Progress, battle or something, yeah.
Daniel (1:58:01)
they, yeah, the progress
thing. And I feel invested in his story. Again, like I have no financial interest at all in his businesses, right? But I feel like the fact that I discovered him before he became famous, I'm almost proud of him and proud of me noticing him like, and it's fascinating. And I think it's a big opportunity for new accounts because sometimes people tell me I was daunting to start from scratch, but actually it's usually...
I think you discovered as well, you grow fast as usual in the beginning. Now my follower growth and whatever is growing slowly, but in the beginning you have this opportunity of having people discover you early and whatnot. anyway, maybe it inspires some people to...
Dagobert Renouf (1:58:33)
Yeah, yeah,
Yeah.
⁓
There's a bonus to being... Also at the beginning, nobody has blocked you, nobody has muted you. Me, I probably have a lot of people who muted me. So you spread less. So at the beginning, you have this bonus. Because Twitter is going to recommend people you don't follow. So you follow more people. They want you to follow more people. So once you have a lot of people who follow you, well, you're not recommended as much, so you're less visible. Yeah. Well, okay.
Daniel (1:58:53)
Yes, yes. Oh yeah, I'm a lot.
That's the...
Nice talking. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (1:59:16)
That was awesome to have you. Please
don't close this right away. I'm just going to end the call, but don't close it right away. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel (1:59:22)
No, no, yes, I know. I'll let it upload. We'll see you around. We'll talk soon. And best
of luck with everything that we do in October, right? it? So I'll...
Dagobert Renouf (1:59:31)
Wedding
is, it should be, we don't have the final date yet but it should be, yeah. Cool. Have a good one man. Bye, cheers.
Daniel (1:59:34)
day too. Good good good good. Wonderful. Happy for you. Cheers.