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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Dagobert Renouf (00:02)
Hey Philippe, welcome to lunch day!
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (00:03)
Hey, nice to meet you, thanks for the invite.
Dagobert Renouf (00:07)
Yeah, so actually it wasn't easy for you to get in because I think you submitted like, you know, one or two launch days ago and I'm like, you know, I'm not really sure about AI tools, ⁓ you know.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (00:19)
Yeah, it took a little bit of begging from my side. ⁓
No, actually not begging. Actually, I tried to explain to you the challenges that I faced using AI to create content and how I changed the tool away from just an AI assistant to something better maybe. I'm still trying to figure it out. ⁓ But yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (00:46)
Yeah, it's also, you know, it's not just that, it's also, you know, I meet so many people with launch day, eventually I saw, okay, this AI thing is not, you know, it removes my bias, you know, because I see everybody do things and I see, wow, there's a cool way to do this, there's a cool way to do that. You know, sometimes I can have judgment of like, this product seems like, you know, but like, sometimes you get good surprises. So yeah, I opened it up more. I want to stay...
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (00:57)
⁓ huh.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (01:15)
authentic because I'm going to promote this product and I want them to be... I'm not accepting products that I don't really like. But also I understand some things are not my taste, but it can still be good. And it's actually not easy to be in this position of having to judge. So I'm trying to be like, because I don't want to say no to a product if it's a good product, a good person.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (01:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm
Dagobert Renouf (01:43)
just because I don't like it, you know, so I try to find a balance, so it's not easy.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (01:45)
Yeah, yeah, true.
I can only imagine how the people at Y Combinator must be feeling like if they get thousands and thousands of applications every, I guess, week. And you have to choose from those. That must be freaking hard.
Dagobert Renouf (02:00)
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (02:07)
So how's
launch day going at all? mean, are you getting a lot of applications? I see you have been focused on your suite suite recently.
Dagobert Renouf (02:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, my wedding suit with logos, sponsorship. But yeah, no, lunch day is good. think on average I get, basically I get maybe right now 40 or 45 applications a month, so it's not that much. And I accept maybe 50 or 60%. You know, that's the numbers right now. I think, you know, making it $100 is just...
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (02:35)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (02:49)
removes a lot of people who would just like submit for nothing, you know, for yeah, yeah, yeah, like for a lot of people it's like, my God, it's so expensive. And then they start saying, and the funny thing is like a lot of people are going to start thinking, well, like, what's the return on investment? You know, I need to get all these sales and like, because the idea of launch days, I'm doing my best to get everybody some sales. That's really, you know, I really want this because I think it's you need a goal. Like if it's just getting up votes, it's the most boring shit. So I think getting sales is a very good goal.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (02:51)
Really? Yeah, yeah, okay.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (03:20)
But the ROI is like, I think you should look at it ⁓ in a wider way. You get an interview on the podcast, you show yourself, you connect with the community. It's a whole thing. ⁓
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (03:25)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, true. To be honest,
for me, I mean, it's not really about the sales. ⁓ It's only about the backlink, to be completely honest.
Dagobert Renouf (03:43)
It's just the back... cause
you know my backlink isn't the best man, you know so.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (03:46)
I know, I know, but
I think it will be at some point in the future. And also I thought it's just a nice ⁓ concept community wise. ⁓ I just like talking to people. Yeah, but for me that's the main thing. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (03:50)
Yeah, for sure. I think so, yeah.
Because if it's just the backlink, you could just get all of these other launch platforms, don't do an interview and save time.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (04:14)
I know, I know. But on the other
hand for me it was like, $99, that's not so much. I spent, recently I spent $999 on the John Rush directory service. yeah, I know, I know.
Dagobert Renouf (04:31)
Yeah, I was gonna suggest that. You can do that and you'll get 20 or 50 or 100 backlinks. Then you don't need me. So
I guess you didn't come just for the backlink. I don't know. ⁓
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (04:41)
No,
I mean it's the backlink and the community thing that I kind of thought it might be nice talking to you and see what comes out of it. But for me it's really not about the sales. mean ideally it reaches someone who says ⁓ it's interesting but you can improve this and that. That would be nice. But I don't really expect sales from it. ⁓ Because also...
Dagobert Renouf (04:51)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (05:10)
I mean you're targeting mainly ⁓ people on Twitter here, let's say. Or are you also active on LinkedIn? Yeah, okay. So Postflow right now, I'm kind of focused on people on LinkedIn and LinkedIn content marketing because I've been doing it for ⁓ a few years and I know that it works. LinkedIn content marketing works if you do it right. And Postflow does a bunch of different things.
Dagobert Renouf (05:15)
Yeah? No, no.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (05:36)
⁓ And in order to kind of nail it down for one target group, I decided together with my co-founder, I decided that we focus on LinkedIn for now because that's what we know best. And then Postflow can also do, it can also support you posting on X and scheduling tweets to X and stuff like that. But ⁓ for me, that's not the focus of the product right now. So it does that and I can... ⁓
I use it for that, but ⁓ my target group is not indie hackers on X.
Dagobert Renouf (06:12)
think it's good to have a clear focus, not just be doing scheduling tools, but like, okay, it's focused on LinkedIn, and then you can do more interesting stuff with that, I guess, because of it. I guess we'll look at it a bit after. But before looking into that, I'm curious about, I hear an accent. Are you German? Or are you... You are German. Okay, cool. Can you guess which accent I have? No, I'm kidding.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (06:15)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah yeah, German. my god, that's so annoying. Yeah, mean dude.
We're neighbors practically.
Dagobert Renouf (06:44)
Yeah, I'm obviously Spanish. No, I'm kidding. what's
your story, man? How did you... So you're from Germany, I guess. You still live. Where are you now? I mean, you don't have to share if you don't want to, like, know, where are you approximately?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (06:53)
Yeah. Yeah.
No, it's fine.
mean, if anyone Googles me, ⁓ he will or she will immediately find me anyway because I'm so ⁓ visible on the internet, I guess. So I'm living in Stuttgart. Stuttgart is in the south of Germany. And for people who know Stuttgart is the home of the automotive industry in Germany. So Mercedes-Benz is here with the headquarter. Porsche is here with the headquarter.
Bosch is here with the headquarter. So in the past century there have been ⁓ probably tens of thousands of inventions around ⁓ what drives us today ⁓ have been made in Stuttgart, including the automobile itself was invented and first produced in Stuttgart. Obviously that's debatable and people from... Exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (07:48)
Mm-hmm.
Everybody fights about who invents what, know. French and Belgium
⁓ fight about who invented the french fries. So, you know, it's never ending.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (07:59)
Okay. Yeah,
true. But no, I mean the automotive industry is deeply rooted here. And I was actually born in Hamburg in the north of Germany. And when I was 10 years old, we moved here to the south. And ⁓ since then, I've been living in the south. I've studied in Mannheim, which is a little bit further north, but also more or less on the... What? I studied law.
Dagobert Renouf (08:22)
What did you study?
What did you study? Law? OK.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (08:29)
I studied law because my father studied law as well and he was doing something completely different from law and ⁓ so I had after school I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do. ⁓
I went to Mannheim because my girlfriend studied in Mannheim but business. And so I just went to Mannheim and studied law there. And the advantage of studying law in Germany is that you have a lot of free time until the very end of the studies. At the very end of the studies you have to learn hardcore for one year and then you do the big exam and when you pass that you're good. And if you don't pass that you still have your high school diploma but nothing else. So yeah, the last
Dagobert Renouf (09:13)
Okay, and you cannot
pass it again. If you fail, you cannot pass it again.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (09:17)
No,
if you fail, I mean you have three tries to do it, but if you fail all three then you fucked. And then you can become a taxi driver or whatever. Yeah, so I studied law, but I already founded my first company when I was 18 years old in high school. Back then it was, I'm 37 years old, so that was 20 years ago.
Dagobert Renouf (09:23)
Okay, three tries, okay.
So what company was that?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (09:44)
It was a web design company. Back then in 2006, 2005, web design was still a thing. And so it was a web design company.
Dagobert Renouf (09:47)
Okay, yeah.
Shit wait,
wait, wait, wait, you said you're 37 and it was 20 years ago and I just realized I sold my first website, I'm 36, 20 years ago as well. I was still convinced it was 18 years ago because I said that to myself for two years and now I realize it's 20 that I made my first website. Oh my God. Oh shit.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (10:00)
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, know. I feel you, I feel you. That's
a hard realization to have in a podcast. It can turn into a life crisis. But actually, yeah, we're in the age now where you get your midlife crisis, So... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (10:20)
Yeah, well I guess.
⁓ big time, yeah. Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (10:34)
Yeah, so I studied, I did this web design company and I continued doing ⁓ web design projects for, ⁓ during my whole studies basically, because as I said, the law studies give you a lot of free time ⁓ in the beginning. And so I continued doing the web design stuff and through it, I got in contact with some guys from Berlin and ⁓ I helped them build their startup. ⁓
and I got a few shares from them for helping them build it. It was called Salon Meister in Germany and now it's called Treatwell. And I think Treatwell is a European white brand because ⁓ after a few years Salon Meister was bought by a competitor from UK and then at some point the product was that you can book your ⁓ hairdresser salon.
Dagobert Renouf (11:05)
What was the startup?
But what's the product though? What does it do?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (11:31)
you can book it online. So instead of calling them, you just go to the website, look for your ⁓ hair salon.
Dagobert Renouf (11:32)
Mmm.
It's funny, every
time I go to the hairdresser, they don't have online booking. And I was always thinking, why not? Why nobody built that? And I guess, yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (11:41)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it
exists, but ⁓ and it was successful. And as I said, after a few years, they got acquired.
Dagobert Renouf (11:54)
But
hairdressers are always late though. When you go there, you go and you... not in Germany, but in France, oh my god.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (12:01)
Yeah, I think it's
quite complicated to ⁓ properly estimate how long they will take for each service and so on. I remember the booking engine that we built became super complex because in the beginning it was only, okay, this saloon has two or three hairdressers and these hairdressers have a schedule each day and so you just need to fill this schedule.
and you know that cutting here takes a half an hour or whatever and then you can just fill the schedule. But soon they started requesting, ⁓ they have like some special tools that they use, but they have only one of these tools per saloon. And so you need to consider that this tool has to be free as well when it's requested for that service or required for that service and so on. So it quickly became very complicated and complex, the booking engine. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (12:43)
wow, my god.
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (12:57)
Yeah, exactly. but after a few years it was sold to, back then it was called WAHANDA, WAHANDA, I think I never pronounced that brand. But it was sold to WAHANDA, which was a competitor from UK and they had a lot ⁓ more VC capital and wanted to expand onto the European continent from UK, from London. And so they bought
Salon Meister in Germany and some other services in other European countries and then started expanding.
Dagobert Renouf (13:29)
And so you
just helped them, like you just did consulting for them or did you have shares also?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (13:33)
No, ⁓
I had, I just talked about my web design company. So ⁓ with this web design company and the team that I had there, we built the whole website and the whole backend, basically the whole software. ⁓ Because the guys from Berlin, they were only, I think they were three founders in the beginning and they were all business guys. So nobody from them had a tech background.
Dagobert Renouf (14:00)
Yeah, okay, nobody technical,
yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (14:03)
Exactly. And so I was kind of the first technical guy in the team. And I had my software development team and with them we developed this thing.
Dagobert Renouf (14:18)
Ok, so you did that and you've always been an entrepreneur a few years later? Or did you ever became a lawyer or something? Or something with love for even one little bit, use of this diploma or nothing?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (14:23)
⁓ no.
No, I never became a lawyer. No,
no, no. I mean, I think I use my law background because obviously you understand much more about the law system if you studied it. So that helps in the everyday life, let's say. And it helped me occasionally in my business life as well. ⁓ But I never practiced law.
I never had interest in that because I always said, well, I had this kind of realization at some point where I said, it was back when Uber was first coming up and was first getting billed and rolled out and so on. And I realized that lawyers, they always try to squeeze something new that is happening into the existing law system and try to make it fit and regulated and so on.
Dagobert Renouf (15:07)
Mm-hmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (15:22)
And I wanted to be on the side of people who are actually building things instead of trying to make it fit into what we already have. ⁓ Maybe that's a little bit narrow point of view, maybe it's a little bit simplified, but that's how I felt. so after my... ⁓ So in Germany you have two law degrees, the first and the second law degree. And after my first law degree, I decided, okay, I don't want to continue working or continue studying law. I want to go into the...
Dagobert Renouf (15:26)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I see.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (15:50)
into the digital world fully. back then I was 25 years old, approximately, and we just got sued by one of our clients from the web design business. And ⁓ we built a website for them and he wasn't happy. And ⁓ he had ⁓ dozens of changes all the time that he wanted to have us implement. And then at some point I snapped.
Dagobert Renouf (16:04)
wow, for wh- wh- why?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (16:20)
and said, ⁓ okay, we stop work on this website now until you pay us in full and then we can continue doing changes, exchange requests. And that's when he said, you don't want to continue working on the website. Okay, then I want to get all the work that my people put into the project. I want to get it reimbursed from you. And then he did a calculation and came up with, I don't know, 40, 50,000 euros that he wanted to have back from us. Mind you for
⁓ 7500 website project. So it was completely out of proportion, but he wants to have the money back. And then it took like six or seven years. And because of the high ⁓ value that was ⁓ that we talked about, it directly went to the second order court in Germany. So it didn't went to the smallest court. It went to the next bigger court.
Dagobert Renouf (17:17)
Yeah, okay.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (17:19)
And so the whole process took like six or seven years, was super stressful. But the problem was I was 25 years old. I had barely any money. And for me it was like, okay, if he wins this process, then I will have to register for private insolvency at 25. And my parents couldn't or didn't want to help me. And so it was obvious that I would be fucked if this process would go through.
Dagobert Renouf (17:29)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (17:48)
So that was a super stressful time. And then a few years.
Dagobert Renouf (17:54)
Despite
being a lawyer, despite you were a lawyer, it wasn't making you feel any...
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (17:57)
Yeah, I mean it helped me because I had
all these connections at university and I was working at a chair at university and doing their website and so on. But so I had a good connection to all the senior people working at the chair and together with them they really helped me more psychologically, less on the actual content of the process. But yeah, I mean I printed out all the emails that we had and
Dagobert Renouf (18:02)
Hmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (18:26)
took like folders and folders of communication to the chair and we sat there for hours and tried to figure out what was going on and so on. So that was actually quite helpful to study law in that moment because I had all these people helping me. But on the other hand, ⁓ in the end we had to go through the whole process with our lawyers. And I mean, I wasn't a lawyer, I was a law student. So I couldn't defend myself obviously and it would have been a total...
Dagobert Renouf (18:30)
Yeah.
Yeah,
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (18:55)
Disaster if I would have tried to defend myself, but because it's in the end. It's complex ⁓ process ⁓ Yeah, but that was that was that and so In the end we did win Yeah, but yeah, it took just it took very long and it was super stressful and in the end we had to pay like a fee of
Dagobert Renouf (19:07)
So did you win?
Yeah, super stressful, you don't know what's gonna...
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (19:23)
I don't know, a few thousand euros for our lawyers and for the court fees. ⁓ But our enemy, the plaintiff, he didn't win ⁓ and he didn't get the money from us that he wanted. ⁓ And then ⁓ while the process was going on, Salon Meister was acquired by this other company. So suddenly I had a bit of money.
Dagobert Renouf (19:34)
Opponent, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (19:50)
And then ⁓ my stress level also went down because I thought, okay, worst case, will lose all the money that I made from this acquisition. ⁓ But I will not be private insolvent, privately insolvent. don't know how to translate it. yeah, bankruptcy. Yeah, yeah, right, And yeah, and then this chapter was closed. But at that point, I was kind of healed from being an entrepreneur.
Dagobert Renouf (20:06)
No, I get it. I guess bankruptcy, they say usually. ⁓
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (20:19)
⁓ I just wanted some security. I wanted to have something where I don't have to think about the business 24 seven. And so I went to a company in Heidelberg, which is.
Dagobert Renouf (20:32)
But wait, wait, okay.
Before going to that, it's interesting what you said about, because I was freelance for like 15 years or something. Well, since I was 16 or 15, let's say really 12 years really active.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (20:42)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (20:54)
And yeah, I got fucked so badly very quickly that I then learned to be super strict, you know. So I was always asking for down payment and there was always a contract because, know, freelance sometimes you don't do anything, you know, agency. I guess when you have employees is different. But and what I and I remember, it's funny, you said like when you had some money.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (20:59)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (21:20)
Then you felt better about the whole thing because you were more free to like defend yourself less stressful because you made money from the sale of the other startup. And me, that was my last freelance project. The last one I took that was in, I don't know, 2017. And I had spent six months looking for a job in the US. I wanted to work for a US company because I know you were making more money. And I had spent six months doing that.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (21:45)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (21:48)
trying to work remotely from France and everything. And I had nobody reply to me, so I was like, okay, and I had to make some money again. And there's a guy who calls me and from the first call of this guy, it's bad. I know this guy is gonna be a very terrible client, because I know I had like 20 or 30 clients or even 50, so I know. I smell it. And so this guy is like,
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (21:50)
Mm-hmm.
You
Dagobert Renouf (22:17)
Yeah, I need a web designer, it's super urgent, can you do this, can you do that? I'm like, okay, cool. And I just coming back from San Francisco when I traveled to try to find opportunities. so, at San Francisco, the very minimum I could charge was $600 a day at the time. That's like really low.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (22:30)
huh.
huh.
Dagobert Renouf (22:42)
And so I tell him, know, okay, so I'm back in France, so I know the salaries are less. So I say him, yeah, okay, I can do 500 euros a day. It's going to take 10 days, you know, something like that. And he said, I will never pay that. I can give you 150. I'm like, so I'm like literally laughing like on the phone. I'm like, oh, okay, well then bye. I don't give a shit, you know. I don't care. And then he calls me back half an hour later. He said, you don't know who I am.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (22:58)
Okay.
Dagobert Renouf (23:11)
I sold the startup for one million, I was on TV and shit. You can't say no to me, so I can pay you 400 a day. And at that time, I really need the money because I didn't have any replies from the US companies I wanted to work with. And I'm really running out of money. I have like 2000 left or something. And so I'm like, I know it's going to be fucked, but I'm like, okay, I can still get some money from it. So I say, okay.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (23:17)
What the fuck?
huh.
⁓ huh.
Dagobert Renouf (23:41)
and I make the most strict contract I ever made. I was like, okay, so we negotiated eight days, you know, and I said, okay, I'm gonna work eight days. You're gonna pay me first for three days. Then after three days, you pay me for two more days. Then after these two more days, I finish and then you pay me the end. So when I did this, I knew I'm probably not gonna get the last payment, you know, like the last, you know, 1,000.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (24:02)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (24:09)
like
1500 euros, probably not gonna get them. But at least I'm covering myself. So we go through the process. It's a nightmare. I go to his house, I meet him, I discover this guy has eight interns working in his house. His house is his office and they're working from his house. They're all underpaid. I see crazy good developers and they all have very low confidence, very low self-esteem. They're all getting paid 150 a day, not even getting any protection. That's just like freelancing.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (24:24)
What the fuck?
huh.
huh.
Dagobert Renouf (24:39)
So I'm in shock at this guy's operation, you know, ⁓ and I start doing the work and as I start doing the work, I literally cannot do the work because there is nothing, there is nothing ready. Like what he sold me was absolutely not ready. So anyway.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (24:43)
The fuck?
But was
it true that he ⁓ did this big accident stuff like that? ⁓ okay.
Dagobert Renouf (24:58)
Yeah, it was true. was true. Yeah, yeah.
He had sold the company like it was a rental property company, you know, and yeah, he was on TV and shit. Yeah, Yeah, okay. And so I start doing the work. I end up doing the work and I start from the beginning. Okay, I need to send this guy lots of proof by email. So every time communication is email, you know, all the time, super clean. And then
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (25:05)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm Yeah And you never got replies
on those emails
Dagobert Renouf (25:29)
Sometimes yes, because I said, oh, I cannot continue working. You need to pay me the next thing. Please confirm this. So, you know, it's just at the end when I reach the end, I deliver. And of course, at the end, I say, OK, can I get the last payment? And of course, he says, this is not what I wanted. You misled me. know, even though every step of the process, there was everything. And he said yes every time. And then he said, I never said yes to this. You literally said yes three months ago, you idiot.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (25:32)
Okay, okay, very good. Yeah, yeah
you
huh. Yeah, I know.
Here's the email.
I didn't mean it like that.
Dagobert Renouf (25:57)
Yeah,
and so at this time, I'm like, I'm never gonna get my money back ⁓ But at this time, you know what happens one of the companies from the US they sent me an email six months later They say yeah, we want to work with you. ⁓ I I get on the call with them and you know Americans 20 minutes after the call
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (26:10)
Mhm.
Nice
Dagobert Renouf (26:19)
they sent me $10,000 to get started. know, it's like, so, you know, when Americans, I like how they are willing to take risk. And I ended up working with them for more than one year, you know, that was amazing. ⁓ That's when I was making basically 100K a year from them, that was awesome. And so finally, I have money. And so this guy, I'm like, huh, this guy, huh?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (26:21)
What the fuck?
Yeah.
Wow.
huh.
You
Dagobert Renouf (26:46)
So I started calling a lawyer and everything and for the lawyer it was a piece of cake. And so she just destroyed him. She sent him a few letters and he completely folded and he said, okay, I'm
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (26:51)
Mhm.
Very good. Yeah, sometimes you
need a little bit of serendipity in order to find your way. But it's nice.
Dagobert Renouf (27:06)
Yeah, you know, it's like
things don't happen at... I think sometimes you can trigger things to happen, but you cannot know when they will happen. Like you put all your energy and something will happen, but maybe it's going to happen way later. So you have to kind of like, you know, don't lose faith or something.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (27:11)
Hmph.
Yeah, I quickly.
Exactly. I think I
once read a quote from someone, I don't remember from whom it was, it was on Twitter as well, or an ex, but he said you have to continuously increase the surface area for luck to hit you. And that's basically all that we do, right? Yeah, you just have to continue opening opportunities, getting to know people, but not with the goal of doing a sale or... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (27:36)
Yeah, yeah, keep, trying things. Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (27:48)
or with some transactional goal, you just have to like opening opportunities, opening doors. And if you do that long enough, sooner or later, luck will find you.
Dagobert Renouf (27:58)
You know this.
Yeah. And I noticed that with launch day and with this suit, this sponsorship of the suit, it's crazy the opportunities that I get that I never expected because actually selling sponsorship for my suit actually demonstrated that was good at sales because it's not easy to sell because a lot of people, don't believe they say, what about your wife? What does she think about? Like actually selling to my wife was a fucking challenge. But, know, but
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (28:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
But she's
good with it now.
Dagobert Renouf (28:31)
she's more than good with it because like, know, she really gets it now. She sees the because I think, you know, it's not just selling something. It's like, you know, it's like launch day. It's like bringing the indie community with me at my wedding. That's really how I feel about it. It's like I'm going to have my indie friends with me at my wedding. And that's like a very cool way of doing that. And so once she got it, she was now she's super excited. She wants to do a startup cake like, you know, the wedding cake should be with logos on it. So she's she's excited about it. No, it's awesome.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (28:34)
Mhm.
Mm-hmm. ⁓
That's cool,
⁓ okay.
Dagobert Renouf (29:01)
But you know, that was the process of me, you know, explaining and showing in a way, you know, and also for people. And the crazy opportunity that's happening is now I'm probably going to start working with another founder who did Lounge Day to help him with sales, you know, ⁓ which I never thought in my life I would do sales, but I realized, shit, I'm doing sales now with my suit and it's working. And so he saw me do that. And now I'm like, let's do sales.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (29:15)
Mhm. Mhm.
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Dagobert Renouf (29:30)
And I'm like, yeah, I need some money so that I can do that, you know, alongside launch day. And that would be cool. So, but that's a crazy thing that would have not happened if I hadn't pushed, ⁓
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (29:30)
Yeah.
Yup. Yup.
Exactly. Exactly. Also
to go out of your comfort zone and just try something very unusual. Yeah, nice.
Dagobert Renouf (29:50)
So
now I'm curious about your product though, because we talked about it at the beginning. And so I guess you've been an entrepreneur for a long time now, been through all of that. And what brought you to build this product that you're showing?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (30:05)
Yeah, actually, I don't, I still feel it difficult to say that I'm an entrepreneur. I don't feel that way, to be honest. I'm just doing stuff that interests me and I have the luck that I am relatively free now. So, yeah, but for me, an entrepreneur is someone who...
Dagobert Renouf (30:14)
wow, why?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (30:30)
like builds a big company and there's like we see capital and there's the
Dagobert Renouf (30:35)
Do you still have the agency
and freelancing or what's happening?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (30:38)
Yeah, so let me quickly wrap that up. ⁓ after this when I was 25 years old or so I went to this scale up in Heidelberg because I didn't want to be working on my own anymore because of all the risk and so on. So I was there for four years. It was a super cool time. But at some point I realized my learning curve is getting is becoming less steep. So I left the company.
moved to Stuttgart back to where I come from together with my girlfriend and then I started my another company again, ⁓ Reruption like disruption but reruption and now that ties back to what I said in the beginning about Stuttgart so Stuttgart is the home of the automotive industry and the automotive industry is in a big transformation since 20 years or something like that ⁓
And the first 15 years, they didn't know that they are in this transformation. But now slowly it becomes painfully obvious. so Reruption was founded as a consulting company, as an innovation consulting company. ⁓ And we wanted to help big companies ⁓ like Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, ⁓ and so on. We wanted to help them do this transformation more effectively by helping them
explore new business models ⁓ and yeah, we help those big companies and build.
Dagobert Renouf (32:05)
That's where the money
is right. B2B with big enterprise. That's the only way to be safe, I think. Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (32:09)
Yeah, yeah, obviously, mean, consulting, obviously,
if you do it right, there's a lot of money in it. ⁓ Because in these big companies, you have a lot of people who are insecure how to do something. And if someone external comes and says, this is how you have to do it and to manage to increase.
Dagobert Renouf (32:26)
an expert. Yeah. And then they can say if they fail, they can say it's the expert.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (32:31)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (32:31)
It's not me. Don't fire me. Yeah. But you don't care. So it's perfect.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (32:35)
⁓ So that's that is what I did for ⁓ another six years or for the last six years. And then this kind of innovation consulting that we did. This is changing now. Many big companies are giving up on their digital labs and they don't do these digital business explorations anymore.
Dagobert Renouf (32:50)
Mm-hmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (32:57)
because they don't have the money, they have to save, they have to focus on their core business and so on. So this is changing and then last year we decided, okay, let's refocus Reruption and do something else and that's when AI obviously came around the corner. And so we said, okay, let's fully focus on AI now, try to find clients there, try to do consulting in that ⁓ area. And then we obviously also started,
Dagobert Renouf (33:01)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (33:27)
personally was interested how can I program with AI and so last May, May of 24 I started doing some small projects where I used AI to do the programming. I hadn't programmed... Yeah, the last time that I was actually coding was when I was 16 years old, so also 20 years ago. ⁓ But when I was 16 years old I ⁓ programmed...
Dagobert Renouf (33:42)
So did you know how to code before?
Yeah, okay.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (33:56)
Something like do you know medium comm this yeah, and so I programmed something like that Yeah, exactly. So I programmed something like that when I was 16 ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (33:59)
Yeah. So website for publishing articles. Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (34:09)
And obviously it didn't really take off. I made a little bit of ad revenue from it, but that's it. And ⁓ I closed it a few years later again, but that was when I last programmed using PHP and JavaScript and so on. And I never was a real programmer. I was always a script kiddie who was just copy pasting stuff from the internet. But it kind of worked. ⁓ so that was the last time that I really programmed. But I was always interested in the tech behind software and how everything works.
Dagobert Renouf (34:38)
I
see.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (34:38)
and
on. So I had a basic understanding of how everything works. And so last year I started programming with AI. ⁓ And for me, as a former script kiddie who just copy pasted stuff from the internet, working with AI is like super mind blowing. ⁓ Yeah, so for me it was a super, super
Dagobert Renouf (34:53)
Script kiddie you say, I didn't know this term. Script kiddie, it's funny. Okay, cool.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (35:03)
crazy revelation to work with AI because AI basically does the same, it copies stuff from the internet and puts it together. that's kind of, ⁓ yeah, I mean, then cursor came out, I don't know if, yeah, obviously, okay. I guess in this bubble, anybody has heard of cursor. So I started using cursor and all these tools that came out and it just kept increasing the speed in which I could build stuff. Then Lava Bill came out and blah, blah. And that's when ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (35:06)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (35:33)
Yeah, I said I have my own podcast. ⁓ Or no, maybe, yeah, let's save that for later. ⁓ Yeah, but at some point I realized, okay, AI is so crazy now I can actually build something with AI that is usable. And that's when I decided to take some time off from the consulting business and just don't do any sales anymore for consulting.
Dagobert Renouf (35:41)
Okay, so.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (36:01)
and for new projects and so on. And just take some time off to just do something with AI. Just dive deeper into AI and just find out where it leads me and yeah. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (36:10)
Okay, I see.
It's funny, right?
when I, cause I coded for a long time, but I had kind of like stop enjoying it and AI made me enjoy it again. Cause it feels like you go 10 times faster. I mean, you don't actually, but like you eventually you can go faster and you can focus on like, you know, just reviewing and division and you can try ideas super quickly. that's, so that's awesome. So that's how you build this product. You kind of like vibe coded.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (36:19)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ugh.
Hmm, yeah, exactly That's how I build post flow exactly. Yeah,
it's completely white coated completely I think I maybe I wrote two lines of code in the whole project ⁓ But after after one year of working on this project Of working on post flow. I still cannot write Python or JavaScript syntax so Yeah ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (37:05)
Yeah, no, okay, I get it. Okay.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (37:08)
But it's running on my own server now.
Dagobert Renouf (37:08)
Interesting, interesting.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (37:10)
And I'm sure there's a bunch of security problems in post flow that I just don't know about. yeah, I use Hetzner exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (37:20)
Do you use headsner? Because you're German so I'm like, you must use headsner. Okay.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (37:25)
At some point I got interested in hosting it myself because I already saw that Firebase and Heroku and ⁓ I was running it on Heroku at first. Heroku, Firebase and what else? I don't remember. But it became expensive already even though the project was so small. ⁓ so I said, okay, I will just get a bare metal server from Hetzner just like by the box. They put it in the data center.
Dagobert Renouf (37:44)
yeah, it's crazy, Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (37:55)
And then I thought, okay, I will just try with JetGPT how far I can come with setting up Linux and all this stuff. And it was actually surprisingly easy ⁓ to get Coolify installed. So I use Coolify now to, yeah, I love it. ⁓ And I moved all my projects there, all my...
Dagobert Renouf (38:13)
Yes, really cool tool here. From another indie maker.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (38:20)
fun little projects that have like not even one user per month, but that I want to keep online because I kind of like them. And so I moved everything there and it was a super steep learning curve. But I just love this feeling and it reminds me of being 16 again or 14 and finding out about the internet for the first time and finding out that I can just build stuff and publish stuff and have people use it.
Dagobert Renouf (38:31)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that
feels amazing. That feels amazing.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (38:48)
This kind of feeling, I have
it again at the moment. And I just love that and I enjoyed it so much to set up my own server and put everything on it. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (38:57)
Yeah.
So, ⁓
Just I'm just warning you, I have another call in 10 minutes. So I'm just, you know, but can you show us like the coolest thing that you that the thing you're most proud of that you built on this app? You know, the real demo will be on the website, but like I'm just curious if you can show quickly something that you really.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (39:10)
Yeah.
Yeah.
What am I most proud of?
Dagobert Renouf (39:29)
or that you think is cool, you know.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (39:33)
I think it's actually the sum of all parts because the tool itself, I mean it's not something that someone has not seen anywhere else, you know.
Dagobert Renouf (39:42)
I actually
thought that was, you know, that's why I selected you because I think this idea of focusing on helping the person write, not just write it for them, like review what they write, that seemed way more interesting than usual.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (39:51)
huh. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, okay.
Then let me share my screen. ⁓ So yeah, this is Postflow, the dashboard. And on the dashboard, you can see all of the content pieces that you created. So you see like LinkedIn posts. But also I said I have this podcast and from this podcast, from this video podcast that we have, we cut ⁓ using Opus clips, ⁓ we cut short form video.
Dagobert Renouf (40:23)
yeah, I use it too, yeah.
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (40:25)
And then
I throw all the short form video per episode. So for one episode of one hour, we have like 40 short form video clips. I throw them all into post flow and from post flow, can schedule them to TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and so on. And obviously also Twitter and LinkedIn. ⁓ So I use that. Then you can have your like blog posts. You can have your... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (40:50)
Isn't it
too much to do 40 shorts? Because I think when I have shorts, it's too low quality. Find good shorts is not easy. Even Opus Clips, I think, the really good ones sometimes.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (41:00)
Yeah, I know. I know,
I know, but on the other hand, I don't really give a fuck because the algorithm will just determine if the clip is good or not. So I just throw it in and then I let...
Dagobert Renouf (41:12)
Yeah, no, I get that, I get that, yeah.
And do you see it work?
Do you see like sometimes you get one big one?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (41:21)
Yeah, definitely. mean, I mean, my podcast channel on TikTok has like 80 followers and on YouTube has 80 followers, but it definitely helped us grow the podcast ⁓ compared to just having the long form podcast. So the long form podcast doesn't naturally get discovered. So you don't go to Spotify and look for built in public.
Dagobert Renouf (41:50)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (41:51)
⁓ But through the shorts, people discover the podcast. And instead of ⁓ selecting ⁓ eight clips per week that I post, ⁓ which might be the wrong ones and might not resonate and might not fly, I just throw 40 clips into the algorithm and let the algorithm decide what works and what doesn't. ⁓ So, yeah, that's about it. Yeah. I think...
Dagobert Renouf (42:05)
KIC. ⁓
That sounds very simple, I should maybe try that.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (42:20)
Especially for these calls here, it might make a lot of sense to cut them up into shorts and ⁓ just obviously schedule them.
Dagobert Renouf (42:29)
I do it already because
you know I do a video for every launch day with like a clip of everybody so I already go through this process I just find the best one manually but okay cool
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (42:32)
⁓ okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Yeah. And then you have your tweets here and so on. So you have all your different content pieces because in my vision, Postflow is a content marketing tool for small business owners, for ⁓ self-employed people and so on who want to do content marketing on all these different platforms or LinkedIn on their own blog because doing blog content, it just works to get organic traffic.
Dagobert Renouf (42:52)
Hmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (43:02)
⁓ on Twitter ⁓ and so on. And so in my vision, Postflow is this content marketing tool for all these channels. ⁓ But yeah, the thing that you just talked about is the editor. ⁓ So in the beginning, ⁓ we had these clips from our podcast and then you can do per clip, you can say, okay, generate a LinkedIn post from it or generate a blog post from it or whatever.
Dagobert Renouf (43:03)
Yeah, I see you.
Mm-hmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (43:31)
⁓ So that's the quick generation. But in order to get higher quality posts, you actually have to have your own ideas. ⁓ with Postflow, we want to help you put these ideas into something that is actually a working LinkedIn post. So ⁓ you have this, for example, you have this great LinkedIn post, but you have the same for CreateX post, you have the same user interface and the same for Create a Blog post. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (43:45)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (44:00)
But for Create LinkedIn Post, you have this user interface. On the left here, you see your notes area where you can input your notes. In the center, you have the editor where you can edit what ⁓ you're working on. And on the right, obviously, you see your preview. And now if you write some rough thoughts like, ⁓ want to launch ⁓ Postflow on launch day with Dago Renouf. And that's why I'm...
doing this interview with him at the moment. Then you can see that here on the top we calculate an input quality score and this input quality always measures how good your input is in relation to what target group you want to write for.
Dagobert Renouf (44:33)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (44:52)
So for example, in post flow you define, I want to write for indie hackers who want to grow and build their own business on using AI. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (44:52)
Yes.
so you add that like
in your settings and then it's going to measure against that every time.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (45:05)
Exactly,
So let me just quickly copy paste that. So you have your vibe settings and in your vibe settings you have your author intro where you tell something about yourself, where we continuously ask you follow up questions to make you provide.
Dagobert Renouf (45:21)
This is super cool because I
think if you just sell the content scheduler, it doesn't really stand out. But when you say it like this, it's like, wow, this is like, I never seen that, that's super interesting. It's a good way to stand out, I think. Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (45:28)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Then you
put your writing examples so that the post flow intelligence knows how you're writing, what your tone of voice is, what kind of words you use and so on. And then it calculates the writing style rules from that to use it when writing posts for you. And then you have, for example, the LinkedIn post settings where you say, okay, I want to write these post types. I have this target audience. I have this content value proposition. So I want people to take
Dagobert Renouf (45:40)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (46:02)
this away from my content when reading my content ⁓ and some other settings like tonality, language.
Dagobert Renouf (46:09)
And so
it's going to use all of that not to write for you, but to help you improve your own ideas. So that's awesome. That's way deeper than most tools. That's awesome.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (46:14)
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah.
So when you ⁓ have your input quality now, so the goal is always to get input quality above 80 or something. And then you know, okay, I'm writing for my target audience. So we measure here different criteria. For example, is it an original perspective? Is the insight somehow relevant? it, ⁓ yeah, is it relevant for your target audience? Does it provide value? Is it authentic and so on? And then also we have this little interviewer here.
Dagobert Renouf (46:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (46:47)
who continuously asks you follow-up questions about what you're writing. And these follow-up questions, they are also designed in a way to help you write better for your target audience, to really...
Dagobert Renouf (46:58)
Yeah, it's based
on, again, your original data that you put. I see.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (47:00)
Exactly, exactly.
And then when you're ⁓ done writing your notes, you can either click improve post and then it will take obviously this input here is no shit, but let's see what it makes from it. And then in the background, Postflow Intelligence looks at, what kind of post types do we have? Like, do we want to write a contrarian post or do we want to write an X versus Y post? What kind of post vibe fits to this? ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (47:09)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (47:29)
to this message here, like is it a personal post, is it maybe shit posting, or is it like expert content, stuff like that.
Dagobert Renouf (47:32)
I see,
And now it generated like this post, I guess in German, because it's in your settings. ⁓
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (47:39)
It's in German in this ⁓
case and it obviously doesn't make much sense because of the input that I provided and it doesn't really fit to my target group and so on. But you can see here it generated version 1 now and then you can say, okay, I want to regenerate it. I don't like it. You can provide more input, regenerate it and it will generate version 2 and then you can switch between the different versions and just look at ⁓ what works for you and what doesn't.
Dagobert Renouf (47:43)
I see ya.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (48:09)
And then ⁓ if you're done with it, you can just like take a picture, add it to the, ⁓ let's just take this one. You just add it to the post. And then you can say, either you can say auto schedule, save LinkedIn post, and it will automatically schedule it for the next available time slot. And yeah, save LinkedIn post. Or you can like go to your dashboard after you.
Dagobert Renouf (48:30)
Yeah, I see.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (48:38)
created bunch of posts, go to your dashboard, select.
Dagobert Renouf (48:42)
Hello
I'm sorry I'm still in the previous call. Can you come back in 5 minutes?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (48:45)
Ha
Pramod (48:46)
Okay,
yeah, sorry
Dagobert Renouf (48:52)
No, it's not you, it's me.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (48:52)
Sorry ⁓
Yeah,
me just quickly wrap it up so you go to your dashboard you select all the content that you want to schedule and then you either press schedule or you use one of our hotkeys to schedule it and Then you come into the scheduler and it will automatically ⁓ Put all the content that you selected ⁓ Distributed over a certain time period ⁓ so that you don't have to click around here in some
Dagobert Renouf (49:08)
Yeah.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (49:22)
stupid user interface that will just predetermine what makes most sense what to post when and then you can just quickly schedule it and after you scheduled everything you will come to your content calendar and in your content
Dagobert Renouf (49:33)
You know, I don't
know how much customers you have yet and how the feedback they gave you. My hunch is that ⁓ it's the most interesting thing for me is the content thing, the scheduling. I don't really see it. I mean, it's cool, but like I don't see how it's ⁓ unique. And so I'm just wondering, do you have like feedback from people already who bought it?
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (49:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
⁓
Barely because we don't honestly, we don't have a lot of users. So what we're trying to do at the moment is to offer some kind of micro agency service where people don't use it in a self service, but instead where we help people who want to do content marketing on LinkedIn. We help them do that. We do like regular interviews with them ⁓ and create a post from that and then post them.
Dagobert Renouf (50:08)
Yeah, okay.
Mmm.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (50:29)
But yeah, obviously the whole scheduling and publishing part, this is just like a commodity and it's just like a sanity factor because if you create content somewhere, you don't want to ⁓ pull it out of that system and then schedule it through LinkedIn.
Dagobert Renouf (50:44)
Yeah, I see, see.
And I like the idea of upscaling to an agency. see there's another maker I'm interviewing on this launch data is doing that. And I think it's a good way. It can even make you stand out as an agency if you have the tool.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (50:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, but I mean for us agency
is just, it's, don't, we don't do it because we love doing agency. I want to, so my ambition is I want to build a product because I've never built a product. I've always done projects since 20 years and I like it. like project business and consulting business and so on, but I wanted to prove to myself that I can also build a product.
Dagobert Renouf (51:12)
Yeah, yeah. No, I get it, yeah. I understand you, yeah.
Yeah, I the same.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (51:24)
So agency for us is more to get feedback from people, to ⁓ work more closely with people and see how they interact with the system and so on. ⁓ So that's our agency offering. But in the end, obviously, the idea is to build a software as a service.
Dagobert Renouf (51:30)
Yes.
Now get it, I have the same feeling of like, it's easy for me to do freelance and agency, but I want to do something else. And then it became easy for me to do a course, but then I want to do a SaaS, not just a course. want some, you know. And ⁓ even right now with launch day, I'm basically still kind of like not agency, but I do the interview, so it's not like automated. ⁓ But I actually like it, so it's fine. But I feel like I'm always like, I need to do something. Like I'm obsessed with this, so I really...
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (51:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
It's a service business, yeah, obviously.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (52:12)
I'm not sure it's healthy actually, but yeah. Well,
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (52:12)
I feel you.
Dagobert Renouf (52:16)
⁓ I feel a bit bad that like, I feel like I should handle these interviews a bit better so we are not rushed at the end. I'm sorry. I apologize ⁓ for that. ⁓ No, it's fine. No, no, it's not that, but it's like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe, yeah. Because I'm still trying to balance it. So anyway, that was awesome to meet you.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (52:24)
Don't worry, I talk a lot about myself as well. And I think we could keep talking for two hours or so if you want it. So maybe it's good that it's a little bit time-boxed.
You too. Yeah, thanks.
Dagobert Renouf (52:41)
Good luck on your launch day. So you will have the product
demo for people to see.
Philipp M. W. Hoffmann (52:46)
Yeah.
Thank you, thank you, bye bye.