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Founder Reality with George Pu. Real talk from a technical founder building AI-powered businesses in the trenches. No highlight reel, no startup theater – just honest insights from someone who codes, ships, and scales.
Every week, George breaks down the messy, unfiltered decisions behind building a bootstrap software company. From saying yes to projects you don't know how to build, to navigating AI hype vs. reality, to the mental models that actually matter for technical founders.
Whether you're a developer thinking about starting a company, a founder scaling your first product, or a technical leader building AI features, this show gives you the frameworks and hard-won lessons you won't find in the startup content circus.
George Pu is a software engineer turned founder building multiple AI-powered businesses. He's bootstrapped companies, shipped products that matter, and learned the hard way what works and what's just noise.
Follow along as he builds in public and shares what's really happening behind the scenes.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
George Pu (00:00.226)
So today I want to talk about something that frankly, I regret a lot lately. I've been thinking about lately and obviously, you know, not in a good way or like when you have made a decision five years ago and it still keeps you up at night. That's the sort of decision that's taunted me until today. And I just realized it's been reflecting over the past couple of days and I feel like, okay, that's where I am now. So that's very interesting for you guys might know, I built a business five years ago called Simple Direct.
It's a software product that's available right now in 50 States, you know, in the U S primarily. And then we have a good product. We have, we're solving a real problem from day one. We had a really valid validation process and we have customers who are like frankly paying us. But over the past couple of years, we kind of been stuck in the same place for like many months, for many years. The growth has been really slowing for quite some time. I think at least for the past like a year or so. And I have been figuring out why that is and slowly and slowly has been.
getting to me exactly what is the issue. It's not because the product is bad. We are a really strong product team. It's not because the market is not good. It has a really good TAM, which is like total addressable market. The market is really huge in reality. And after many, reflections, it's really a distribution problem that I personally have created five years ago and have never fixed. And that problem has haunted me to this day. So today I want to talk to you about, you know, the biggest regret I have so far as a founder of Ability to Simple Direct.
Because I personally think that if I have solved this problem earlier, SimpleDirect would really be somewhere else completely different right now in terms of revenue, in terms of the prospects, in terms of sales, in terms of everything. So let's talk about the journey of SimpleDirect.
George Pu (01:50.798)
For you, those of guys who don't know. So I started this company, Simple Direct, initially as an idea in 2019. So the idea was basically embedded lending or buy now, pay later solution that helps home improvement companies, contractors, right? To offer financing to their customers in very, very, very simple terms. The people that we're helping with, they are the contractors, right? They're the home remodelers, right? They're the bathroom innovation. They're the HVAC installers, right? They're the big ticket items, contractors, right? Who comes in your home. If your roof is leaking.
They come to your home and then they fix it. Right. So it's obviously a very large ticket item. And basically we see that in many states that consumers don't have as much money to fix something, especially when it comes to big ticket items. we're seeing that roofs cost like $30,000 and a homeowner who has most of their money probably stuck in home equity and also their 401ks, they couldn't afford to pay cash directly. So we created SimpleDirect as a platform that serves B2B customers, primarily home improvement contractors.
As an app to help them offer simple financing to their customers. And we have revolutionized many ways of how it is for the contractors to be solving this problem. All right. Long story short, it used to take them, you know, months into take a lot of paperwork. We have completely revolutionized that by using a different approach, just by signing up, they can do it. They can offer financing. There's no month of paperwork and you know, they can get started right away. So it's really straightforward. And the value proposition was very clear. Product really worked. So I cold called a bunch of lenders and got them on board.
build this like marketplace, we build this like application, we build a mobile app, web app. So all that part as a founder, I'm sure many of you technical guys, you already understand what I'm talking about. And the initial validation was really good. I might have already shared that with you guys before, like we were talking to those contractors on the cold call without even having a product. We called, think 12 contractors in Texas. And I think of the, I think nine people that have picked up, I think six of them say, yes, I want to join your pilot program.
Right. And I have to talk about it, you know, many years after I found a few podcasts now to talk about with my other like YC founder friends. You know, I have a few friends who are from Y Combinator, few of friends who are like venture validated and all that. They're all very surprised or like George, like we're really like jealous of how fast we were able to find a validation about like just cold calling and people would say, yes. So obviously we're solving a really big problem, right. And the progress work as usual. So we got lenders, we got approval rates, we're approving people.
George Pu (04:10.422)
Obviously they send them out someone, we approve them, right? Our countries got more sales, right? But there's one thing I really thinking back, I think I did not think that well about, right? And that potentially is the business killer now is that didn't really think about where they are conducting the business, right? Contractors are not online, you know, like at all, right? And that's probably same for many offline businesses. For example, like retail stores, maybe like the retail store, the convenience store owners, maybe they're not spending enough time online.
For contractors, as you can imagine, they go into your house, they fix the roofs and the manager's assessment reports are always on the phone with customers. The owner profile is really like people who are in their fifties, right? The guys primarily who barely use email, who quite frankly have, you know, a high school diploma, most of them. And that's for another day topic, but I actually think going into trade is much better than going and getting a college degree personally per se, but that's for another day. So basically, right, those clients who I closely work with.
They don't have LinkedIn and they definitely don't use Twitter and they don't use tech talks to install windows and stuff. know, none of them actually do. So that's something I, I know early on I'm aware of it. I have done market research and obviously I found those guys, they're mostly driving their vans or the trucks and they're going to the customer's houses for repairs. So what I realized early on is that when it comes to like doing something online, they actually hire agencies and consultants.
to do it, right? For example, if I'm the owner of like Cooper windows, which is one of our customers, telling Louisiana, and if he wants to install a window, right? If he wants to get a really good website to be done, he hires a consultant. If he wants to do any Google ads, he hires a consultant, right? That's because he's not tech savvy. And to be quite frank, I don't think trades people should be tech savvy, right? That's like asking me to be handy for everything around the house. I just, you know, I give up most of the time. I really don't know what to do.
So I hire handyman, right? So obviously reverse, reverse engineering this, like you shouldn't really expect blue collar people to be really good at tech, right? That's not their expertise. Their expertise is like building stuff, building the physical stuff, right? So, so I realized that and I'm aware of it and I thought that's fine. I thought about it, you know, we'll just do sales. We'll just call them. We'll demo the product. We'll be on a zoom call or we'll just be like on the phone with them, close the sales, right? That's a traditional B2B stuff. That's like normal. There's a lot to get to, but.
George Pu (06:28.406)
You know, that's my biggest mistake. Right. And going back in time, I really thought that wasn't something that's going to buy me back five years later, but that's actually the thing that I've missed. And that's the thing that I've screwed up as per se. Right. That's the part that basically killed me because we did not have an audience that is capable or is willing to create a network effect. Right. When, for example, like if you are selling something online, whether it's like e-commerce products, or if you're selling the software, plug a SaaS product, if you really love it.
about it, right? Let's say you're selling e-commerce product on Instagram and you're selling something simple, right? Like candy, candies, for example, people love it and people take a screenshot of it. People take a picture of it and they post it on the Instagram. So more friends see it. More people use it. Same goes for SaaS. I personally found out many products through Twitter, quite honestly, for example, Adio CRM. That's one of products I really like. I didn't really know them. I like, I wouldn't have known them if I didn't see some other founders really talking about and tweeting about it. Right.
And that's something that I think why a lot of founders are online tweeting and showing their content online. Right. And that's also why some B2B founders who are targeting non-tech founders, they go on LinkedIn because LinkedIn has a huge corporate audience and obviously works. Right. So people go to those two platforms primarily. However, we have so many contractors who love simple direct, but in reality, like what happens when they love it, they keep it to themselves and don't tell other people about it. Right.
And slowly and slowly I realized the reason as we were validating through the process, putting the product and all that. We slowly realized that most of the contractors, they are local, right? For example, if you know, you're in New Jersey, you're in Jersey city right now. For example, there's like probably 20 to 40 different roofing companies in your area, right? Or HVAC companies in your area. And they're all competing against one another. So usually what we have seen is that they really are afraid of the competition with other guys and.
I totally understand that, I guess, because, you know, my dad runs a similar business. So it's like, it's all, it's all about, it's all about like, you know, block the competition, right? And if you have something that's really sweet, you don't want others to know about it. Right. I realized that even if contractors are like friends with their other local contractors, they don't really tell them about us because they're afraid that they're going to come to us and use us and take away their quote unquote competitive advantage. And that's a very sad thing to see. However, that's true.
George Pu (08:42.427)
Like the only few referrals that we have seen is like a distributor who's telling their other companies about it. Right. That's one. And also, for example, like I'm this contrast during roofing and he tells his buddy across the state in different state who's doing HVAC, right. was a complete unrelated, uncompetitive, not competing product. Then he refers. So that's like the crazy part. And I slowly realized, you know, there's no viral loop. There's no organic growth, right? Every single customer has to be personally sold by me.
or my co-funders at a time or my sales people at a time. And that was the only way around it. Right. So I basically built a business that could only been grown through expensive time intensive sales. I, and I tried many things looking back, we weren't really doing a lot of marketing because we thought, okay, these guys don't check their emails that much. Right. And it's true for our segment, don't check their emails.
So code emailing didn't really work and we basically Facebook ads and all that didn't work. And our competitors are all hammering down on the phone calls. Our competitors would call, they will call the same contractor 10, 20 times a week sometimes. Right. And they will keep calling the same number sheets until people sign up and pay them. Right. And that's something I realized for me, first of all, it's like, it's not practical. can't call the same people 20 times a week. That's harassment and annoying and.
very not respectful and by those bigger companies, they have the number of salespeople they can turn through, right? They pay them like basic minimum wage. They have a call center and then, you know, they have a really high, really low retention rate. A lot of people just resigned their salespeople, but they keep adding them up on it. Unfortunately, that's like the reality of the industry, right? That I'm operating in personally. So I didn't really realize how hard it was. And over the years, I'm glad about the customers that we have today. It's just like,
Over the past year, think personally, I've just got really tired of doing sales calls and I'm thinking about distribution as well. Like I know I talked to you guys about distribution just two episodes ago or something where I said, distribution is probably your only moat, right? In the AI first world. And looking back today, think that's distribution is something I have pretty much given up or didn't try enough five years ago, four years ago, right? And that's something that's been haunting me to this day. And my business is not growing fast enough because of that. And that is a fundamental problem.
George Pu (10:51.751)
You know, and I didn't really realize the power of content, the power of like creating content and creating things that, you know, my target audiences can, be looking at until I guess I started this podcast, you know, like I guess three weeks ago, two weeks ago. And then I started my Twitter, which is like a while back, but I haven't really been like actively creating content on it until I think a few months ago. And I really saw how content actually works because obviously I'm sharing something that a lot of you guys agree on and you, and you would like to listen to or like see on Twitter and
I'm seeing this growth. I'm seeing like, you know, like obviously more business coming over that hasn't happened because obviously I'm not selling to the founders and SaaS companies and tech business founders at a time at this time, at least. But I really saw how network effect really works. Right. I saw that how social media is connecting everyone together. In a good way for even for me as someone who's not really a social person, my story to this day, it's for you, the founders, the business owners, the entrepreneurs and the solopreneurs.
Right. me, my lesson is that for my business, we're not really going backwards, but we're not really growing either. Right. And every month I feel like I'm kind of doing the same thing. I'm kind of doing more sales calls. I'm doing more demos. I'm doing more personal outreach. I'm reaching out to people on LinkedIn. It's just very exhausting. Whereas we see other founders, I see other founders, you know, building the audiences and customers come to them. Right. They have like inbound channels. have, they have outbound. Sure. Like some companies can have outbound, but a lot of companies have inbound channels. I know many of them. I'm sure you know, many of them.
And I see, I see the power of like content driven growth. And I realized I probably picked the hardest possible audience in a hardest possible industry to build distribution with. And it's brave. I commend myself for going into this industry. However, it's also a very difficult industry to get into. And the distribution paying has been really catching up now. Right. And quite frankly, some of our competitors have raised like series B $50 million or more. And a few other of our competitors have been like acquired and sold off and acquired again and all that. So.
The industry, think itself is really seeing that problem. So it's not just us. think everyone else are seeing this problem in our space. Right. And I think the same can be said in many, many different industries. And I personally feel like contractors are great customers. I really love them. I have really close relationships with many of them. They're hardworking people. They pay to stick around. Our customers have been with us. Some of our customers have been with us for more than five years. They appreciate good products. However, they just simply don't share it. They don't amplify and they don't create that network effects. Like we've tried referral programs and just unfortunately didn't work.
George Pu (13:15.877)
The thing is like, you know, I, could have built some product for different audiences, right. And, and that's something that we're actually currently pivoting to. Just like you heard it from me first, we're pivoting more to become an API for embedded lending for founders and platforms, rather than just focusing exclusively on contractors. So that's something that we've realizing where our strengths are. And going back to what I've said before.
about, you know, picking something that compounds, right? Picking your career that compounds, doing everything that compounds. And I think it's a really powerful thing to think about, like how everything that you do day to day can compound. Right. And just quite honestly, I think what I'm doing with SimpleDirect, it's not compounding. Right. And the reason it's not compounding is just because distribution and I have to sell to everybody. We are doing the things that don't scale, but we've been doing that for the past four to five years. So it's really time to move forward and change, change things and really do something different, you know? So same product, but we're going for a different audience, a different.
different distribution channels. And I think you're going to see in real time how that's going to go in the future. So here's how I wish to you guys. I wish I really understood this five years ago. Distribution really isn't just about like how you reach customers. It's about how your customers can tell more people about it and more people can tell more people about it. Right. And everyone would eventually discover you, the brand, the person, the founder, right. And they will purchase your product because they trust you. They love you.
Right. And that is something I think it's, so super important. When you pick an audience, you're basically picking who you're selling to. And I think my mistake was that I picked the wrong audience, even though I do love them, but it's the wrong audience for the business. Right. Because at the end of the day, for a business, you have to generate revenue. You have to pay your bills. You have to keep your lights on. You have to hire employees and all that. For growth, if you're picking your growth model, you have to pick the right model, right. For your business to work and for it to compound the businesses that cannot compound.
They're just the same as brick and mortar stores on the corner of the street. Those convenience stores, right? There are some great things, but they cannot compound. And always what we talk about is like why Facebook and all the social media channels and why e-commerce even can scale so much is because they remove the brick and mortar, right? Why Amazon can grow so fast is because they remove the brick and mortar and they grow using network effects.
George Pu (15:23.975)
They're a platform. And I think every one of you guys, if you're building something, whether it's like a technology platform, or maybe it's like a service platform or run that, think about whether this business can compound or not, right? Whether it's going to be linear or it's going to compound and eventually grow exponentially. So I think that's the brutal truth. You know, honestly, in 2025, if your customers can or won't talk about your product online, I think you don't really have a scalable business per se, right? There are a few obviously exceptions.
Right. There are, you know, for example, Palantir, you don't have the government talk about it that much. However, people do talk about it and they do create a network effects and more people, more governments can to know Palantir because nowadays they're doing more marketing as well. Right. They're becoming a meme stock. So that's distribution for you. Right. So if you're a company that people don't know about and people, your customers are not going to tell other people about, so you don't have a skill of a business. You basically have a consulting business that's essentially just guided as a product, you know, so what am I doing now?
So I can't completely pivot SimpleDirect after five years, but as I said, we're trying a better lending model and we're trying about adjacent markets where we could, you know, get more people to talk about our products. And that's really what matters. Right. So I'm also using a SimpleDirect as a case study for my next business. If there's any, know, before I build something new, I always ask who's the audience. How can I use the network effects to grow the business? Right. How do I not spend any money on ads? Which is I truly, truly believe in and how do the customers actually share?
Right? What is the natural distribution mechanism? And also like, think this podcast and also my Twitter journey is part of this journey of like actually realizing how content works is my way of learning content. I'm a new podcaster, so to speak. I'm a new content creator. My content creation is not my full-time job. So I'm creating a distribution channel with you guys together and you can see for yourself whether it's working by following the pod and following me. So if you're building something now guys.
Think about this and ask yourself this, does your target audience create content? Does your target audience celebrate wins when they really appreciate and enjoy your product? Right? Do they tell people about it? Who do they tell about it? Right? And if the answer is that your customers are not telling other people about it, they just keep it to themselves. So that's not necessarily wrong. You know, there's obviously like Palantir, there's some businesses that obviously you have that constraint, but that's not wrong, but know what you're signing up for and
George Pu (17:40.687)
understand this problem early on so they can, you can know and basically mitigate those issues by pivoting or changing your product or distribution channels, many different things, many different ways you can do it. So sometimes that's fine. Sometimes it's still worth it, AKA enterprise, customers, government contracts, but be very, very honest about the kind of business you're building. So for me, looking back five years ago, I will probably choose a different line of business, a different line of customer segments. If I could go back.
And I will really be honest with myself as soon as I see the growth curve is not happening because simple direct has been good to me. It's been good to my customers. It's been good to our team. We've been building this product with principle, but I can really see an alternative reality where I would have solved distribution from day one and probably this business would have been a multi million multi hundred million dollar or billion dollar business by now. So maybe I'll give you further along. Maybe I'm different dealing with different set of problems.
better problems, worse problems, right? Or maybe I have different challenges. So who knows? It's a alternative reality that maybe it's possible, but I do know is that for whatever I'm building next and for whatever business I have now, I will always put distribution first. I'll always put audiences first and I'll always put network effects first. I'll always figure out those three things very, very clearly before I go on, you know, to the product validations and to anything else. The product obviously guys is important, but as I said, if people don't share it.
It doesn't matter how good it is. Anyway, that's been on my mind, I guess in the past couple of days. I just want to share with you guys about my learning journey. So maybe you can take that into consideration. Thanks for letting me work it out loud and hashtag, I guess, building in public. I'll see you Wednesday, I guess. And as always, if you love the show, you can always write to me on the George Poo on Twitter and also write to me at George at founder reality show. So thank you so much and talk soon.