Customer Conversations

Spring has been an abundance of rain with an occasional peek of sunshine which has also meant an abundance of good work days, and there are never enough days in the week to work on one’s startup.

I spent a good deal of April having customer conversations in the vein of Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test. The leading premise I was testing was that the leaders of technical teams see burnout and attrition as significant issues and will desire to improve collaboration and creativity, knowing that these are proven antidotes to exhausted teams, and thus hire me to facilitate the creative transformation of their team. That sounds like a lot because it is. I knew it too. The genius of testing your thesis without pitching your idea is you can learn and pivot without the capital loss that would have occurred if you went to market without testing.

As an engineer, this makes perfect sense to me. Rob Fitzpatrick is also an engineer, which is why his book on selling and business building is so valuable. Should Rob ever read this (I will be flattered), my one suggestion for improvement is an update around pronoun usage and gender stereotypes. I struggled because the technical and authoritative “characters” are all “he.” Representation can happen anywhere and is always appreciated, especially from my coder bro allies.

Initial Concept Teardown

Among interesting learnings about my initial business model, I also learned that my concept is very close to what HR departments typically hire for when running DEI efforts. Though I know that bringing more creativity and collaboration to tech teams creates a runway for inclusion on those same teams, I had not considered how closely aligned I was with the HR department. This alignment is not the issue; the issue is that tech companies are killing budgets for DEI engagements like a sugared-up kid at a circus playing whack-a-mole. I am not a DEI expert, and I have a runway to launch TheTechMargin, which cannot depend on my becoming an expert here.

I have a pretty nifty skill at putting people at ease and creating a safe space to get creative and brainstorm. This is what I have brought to my teams, and this is what I was getting at with my original idea. I am still a fan of this idea and will offer my creative brainstorming sessions as remote and in-person workshops. A lot can be accomplished in a 2-day workshop, and even half-day creative thinking sessions will unlock ideation and collaboration from tired brains. Long-term engagements are likely more than I want to bite off this block anyway, as I have a burning need to build things, and I tend to get salty if I stay on the other side of creating too long.

Helpful Information Consumption

I have been doing a lot of listening to founder podcasts lately, with a special focus on 3 from which I have taken various helpful information. I will enumerate them in order of how useful each show is to my process as of today.

Though I would love to hear more female voices, the guys at Indie Hackers are fantastic. I feel like I am hanging with some of my favorite teammates when I listen to their pod. Check them out on your favorite platform or here. They interview great guests excited to share their founder journey and the highs and lows along the way. These interviews have helped me massively on the lonely days of solo-founder trekking. Again, some ladies in the mix would be swell, but I know the pipeline is sparse. *In case anyone from the show reads this— hit me up after I am revenue generating and I will make time for you guys!

The second is a staple to any startup founder, Y Combinator. I have a mixed review of this podcast. Depending on the episode host(s), the tone leans toward catering to a young male audience of founders. My favorite episode and one in which I appreciate the neutral, encumbered-by-ego tone is How to Test Startup Ideas by Jared Friedman. I like Jared’s calm and analytical approach; this is needed when you are alone in the world of business building. Ego and competition are not tools I can or should ever lead with.

This show is tied with Y Combinator for second place, but I need more of the nuts and bolts right now, and they aren’t super consistent about releasing episodes; The Crazy Ones is pretty awesome. I like how the hosts are more casual and riff on topics ranging from how to stay in the Zone of Genius to bootstrapping tech conferences.

Trains, AI, and Bookstore Finds

My friend from wayback Noah Brier of Brxnd has been writing about experiments and products he has been building with AI, particularly in the marketing space. The knowledge-sharing of this SubStack is first-rate, and it is a hype-free-zone.

I was on my way to TC Early Stage Summit in Boston and decided to read Noah’s latest exploration on Brxnd’s SubStack (sorry for the x-link Beehive, I am loyal), this post goes into “fuzzy interfaces” with AI APIs which is just bonkers if I am being honest. Mind is blown. I was down the rabbit-hole and by way of reading this article on building intuition with AI, I learned of Black Swan by Nassim Taleb I was able to find in one of Boston’s many used bookshops almost immediately (it was weirdly lying on the floor when I walked into the science and math section). Buy this book if you have read this far; it will blow your mind.

The power of community cannot be understated. I have known Noah since middle school, with a giant gap of — an intentionally vague number to protect the victims of time — in between. Brxnd has a conference in NYC on May 16th which I will attend as a content creator/press. Stay tuned for my coverage of this inaugural event which is already on waitlist for tickets. My thanks to the team at Brxnd for letting me come as a guest; startup funds are tight when the boots are actively being strapped to the wings of the plane you are building. If that made sense to you, I feel you, my friend.

The Pivot

This brings me back to the update. I have danced at the edges or mostly ignored the hype-fest that has been anything with those two letters as of late. You know, the ones "A” + “I.” Yep, so excellent, so everything, so much hype. I don’t like hype and don’t want to build on a hype train. I know my why is more significant than that, so if AI and I are to play in the same sandbox, the reason for using AI and my why must be interlinked.

My dive down the AI experimentation rabbit hole and the TC Early Stage Summit’s disparagingly low number of women attendees reminded me of my why and the fact that as a female coder, I am kind of a badass, not to be forgotten by numero uno, that’s me. I had to build.

AI hype be dammed, I will find a relevant use case that doesn’t make me feel like a poser jumping on the bandwagon everyone seems to have tied their future selves to without question of consequence. I build user interfaces for fun and money. That is my jam, and though I get the full stack, I super-love the parts of an application that people see and interact with. Then an idea-storm occurred, in the shower, of course.

AI is general tooling. We need to have a middle layer. I landed on TheFaceOfAI as my product. I am currently building the consumer version (yes, big plans ahead), and I will share more soon. I know that was a lot of writing to get to a tiny teaser at the end. I am considering doing some of this build in public - Indie Hacker style and I don’t know what that looks like, so stay tuned for more there.

I have done 95% of my coding as part of a company behind a firewall or an intellectual property clause. Now I am learning to swim all over again, in the waters of building your own future; the water is the same no matter how deep.

Until next time, be kind to yourselves and be fearless, my friends.

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