You know that feeling by the campfire—roasting on one side, freezing on the other?
That is what I have been experiencing for the last 10 days.
But it's not a campfire. It is a small iron cast oven, in a small wooden house in a small valley, somewhere in Romania. While I am getting half-baked, I have the best view over a misty valley, and spending deepwork time on my side project.
The last days were very strange. From firing up the oven in the morning, to chopping wood and then working on product requirements, content strategy and in the evening we get together with our awesome host Codrin, who teaches us to make DIY sausages or fire acceleration paste out of Diesel and Ash. Our host is pure cognitive dissonance for me.
Elite college student. Lived in 4+ countries, and after five years, just decided to cancel the hamster wheel. He bought land, built the first one, now has 3 huts, and just lives the life he always wanted. At the same time, he is incredibly well informed, an awesome “gesprächspartner” and just through his beat-up smartphone is connected to everything that happens in the world. It's a bit like a senior consultant living in a hobbit home, camouflaged as a woodworker. And it is great to actually talk to someone like that.
Side hustle progress
Pick Your Battles: My Anti-Public-Funding Decision
As mentioned in one of the last posts, I thought about funding and whether there are programs that suit my project, but it seems that the effort just isn't worth it. To create all the documents, slide decks, and calculations just for one or two applications isn't worth it. I talked to several people who already had some experience in raising money, and if I am not planning to go on tour and present my app in front of every desk, I can think about, funding programs are not the way to go, at the moment. Additionally, there are sometimes severe reporting policies that would take a lot of time that I could spend on marketing or iterating on my product. As my former team lead often told me: “Pick your battles”. Our host told me the same, the day before yesterday, but he referred to the big, hard, knotted wooden logs I tried to split unsuccessfully.
What will happen to SEO?
Another thing that keeps me awake, besides my nonexistent rural survival skills: SEO. I had a very interesting exchange about the death of SEO and content marketing, which made me a whole lot uncomfortable because relying on paid ads only is not an option for me. I started researching a bit about what the near future will bring, but there is so much chaos created by the emerging technologies that it is hard to predict how this will turn out. I think a solid content strategy and a marathon mindset are the best I can do at the moment, but I definitely need to monitor this.
While researching, I stumbled upon a webinar by VisualMakers about conversion optimisation through AI. While I expected something else, it turned out to be an interesting glimpse into how to use multi-persona AI Assistants and automation tools like Make and n8n to automate processes.
I didn't go further into the rabbit hole, but I have some ideas, from daily news summaries to analysing newsletter content or user feedback.
On the daily business front
Because I took some time off to focus on my own project, there is not a lot to tell.
But one thing happened. I had a Demo-Call with boring.tax, and one of the founders talked me through the product they are building. I first heard about them in an episode of Happy Bootstrapping, and the approach to building an AI-driven tax software caught my attention. I will definitely assess my demo account because I think this whole tax software thing is an area soon to be disrupted and boring. Tax software, with its competitive pricing, is already on it. Personally, I pay 5 times more for bookkeeping than what boring.tax would charge me - the fees for additional questions and services by my tax advisor are not included. And for one just starting out and planning to bootstrap their first company, these costs are worth assessing.
What's up ahead … 🍿
Not sure yet. Not getting knocked out by one of the bears in the valley, I hope.
