Ed Grosvenor and Peter van Dijck record two days before Scalpels launches on Halloween (a Saturday, as Peter points out). Ed is recording from his office on the nineteenth floor in Basel, with a train to catch. He previews his Laravel Switzerland talk and a side project: AI for normies, a collection of fun, non-commercial things anyone can do with AI. Peter shares the pop-up book video he made for his mom's 85th birthday. Then they get to the launch itself. Scalpels gets paid tiers, and a CI optimization course comes out of the lab's test segmentation work. That work sorts tests into three groups: run on every push, run nightly, or delete. It has taken client suites from forty minutes in CI to one. Peter signs up while they're recording and gives feedback on the spot.
The second half starts with Peter's question. Bookkeeping, legal, ops and even product and engineering can now be simplified or automated, but sales and marketing are still hard. How do you find the right marketer when every business needs a different playbook? Ed compares it to how AI made him stack agnostic: an experienced marketer with these tools can iterate just as fast. They also cover Peter's set of MCP-connected primitives for building niche products, and how Scalpels helps Ed in sales calls. Then they turn to the state of agency life. Ed has dropped hourly billing for retainers. A Slack app and telemetry tell him each morning where he can add value, and the job is now to be the person who spots the loose lug nut before the wheel comes off.
Along the way: Postiz on Laravel Cloud and its $60 a month floor, Laravel Forge as a new install target, being honest about why you might keep paying for SaaS, copycats as validation, No Compromises' swipe-to-subscribe retainer, and what happened to the Ralph loop.
Chapters
00:00 Late start, and a launch on a Saturday
01:02 An office on the nineteenth floor in Basel
02:46 Speaking at the Laravel Switzerland meetup
03:14 AI for normies
06:31 A pop-up book for mom's 85th
07:47 Taking Scalpels monetization from WIP to real
08:50 Test segmentation: every run, nightly, or delete
10:09 A CI course: forty minutes to one
11:46 "AI made building software easy and owning software hard"
12:01 Free, with the friction taken out
14:21 The launch plan and forgotten feature flags
15:53 Local and Forge install paths
16:48 Postiz, Temporal and a $60 floor
18:29 Being honest about the trade-offs
20:55 Videos, ads and office hours
22:06 Peter signs up live
25:31 Solo founders wearing too many hats
28:49 Bookkeeping has one playbook; marketing has fifty
32:37 How do you find the right marketer?
36:21 Clones within a week
37:29 Primitives and niche products
39:32 Scalpels as an agency toolkit
42:50 How is agency life going?
46:09 Retainers, not hours
50:51 Fewer hours, more value
52:28 No Compromises and the swipe-to-subscribe retainer
53:42 Watching for loose lug nuts
54:28 Cutting through the hype
56:44 Catch the train
Links
Artisan Beer: https://artisan.beer
Scalpels: https://scalpels.app
Hone: https://scalpels.app/products/hone
Wake: https://scalpels.app/products/wake
Capstan: https://scalpels.app/products/capstan
Sputnik Intelligence: https://sputnikintelligence.com
Ed / Artisan Build: https://artisan.build
Peter: https://petervandijck.com
Mentioned
Last episode, We Survived the PHPocalypse: https://artisan.beer/episodes/we-survived-the-phpocalypse
Laravel Switzerland: https://laravel.swiss
This Week in PHP Internals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeDHs-qXXwA
Laravel Cloud: https://laravel.com/cloud
Laravel Forge: https://forge.laravel.com
Postiz: https://postiz.com
Temporal: https://temporal.io
Marketing for Developers by Justin Jackson: https://marketingfordevelopers.com
No Compromises (Joel Clermont and Aaron Saray): https://nocompromises.io
The Ralph loop: https://ghuntley.com/ralph/
If you enjoyed it, like and subscribe. Peter still insists.
#Laravel #AI #Marketing #Agency #SaaS #Podcast