Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the Rogue Startups Podcast, where two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig.
Speaker 2 00:00:20 Hello and welcome back to Rogue Startups episode 2 74. Craig, how are you doing this week?
Speaker 3 00:00:26 Hey man, I'm doing good. How are you?
Speaker 2 00:00:29 I'm holding it together, uh, moving along and making shit happen.
Speaker 3 00:00:34 Nice, nice. Yeah. Yeah. I think that in this episode we'll, we'll talk a little bit about kind of some updates from our end, stuff we're seeing kind of in the economy and job market. And talk a little bit about chat AI because, or chat, G B T, cuz that's all anyone can talk about, I guess. Um, <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:00:52 You know, I keep looking on Twitter and it's like, is there somebody who can help me with chat? G P T I'm just struggling with it, you know, is there a thread out there that has some, some tools that I could help get some help with? Or maybe some prompts like <laugh>. It's incredible. I mean, it's just this non-DOD stream of that shit. Yeah, yeah. Going on left and right. Uh, and it's so much like, and there's so much content recycling too. Like I see all these, I, I unfortunately follow a very large number of marketing bros, uh, on Twitter because there's an occasional gem that comes out of it. Yeah. But you gotta, you gotta wade through a lot of sewage in there to find it. And, um, unfortunately the thread bros have been championing chat G p D a little hard lately. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:01:38 Yeah. I, you know, it's funny, I, I have kind of gone on and off about Twitter. I was pretty, pretty heavy into publishing for a while and even like actually going on Twitter and reading stuff and commenting and all this. And then for the last like three weeks basically did nothing. Got on it, uh, back a little bit this week, but just in one like list that I have, which is just like my friends, which is not like what Twitter really is all about. Like, it, it's just so, uh, such a narrow view when you do something like that. So trying to find the way I want to use Twitter that's not overwhelming and discouraging and like <laugh>, all this kind of stuff. Like, I feel embarrassed that I'm 42 years old and don't know how to use social media. Right. Um, but that's, that's where I am.
Speaker 2 00:02:23 Well, yeah. I mean, shit happens, but Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I still, I go, you know, I keep saying Twitter's a dumpster fire, but yet at the same time I go on it every day for at least an hour to go through and find, you know, what's going on in the AI world, what's happening on DTC Twitter, what is happening with marketing stuff in general. So, yeah. And even there's like, I follow a few accounts that are still giving me like, news on the Ukraine and stuff like that, that were, you know, some direct boots on the ground kind of sources. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> <affirmative>. So, you know, for as much of a dumpster fire as it is, there are some shining examples and I still, you know, filter and block heavily and they keep, you know, messing around with the chronological versus the curated timeline and, and stuff like that. But there definitely is some value. I, I just, I have to limit myself. I mean, it becomes self-limiting actually. I, I do get bored with it at some point. Uh, that's pretty quickly, you know, probably within 10, 15 minutes I get kind of bored and wanna move on to something else. So I guess that's good. Uh, but yeah. Yeah, it's hard <laugh>. Yeah. It's not my, it's not a, it's not a natural thing for me, so.
Speaker 3 00:03:39 Yeah. Yeah. You know, like I'll, I'll just share like in the fall or in the, or beginning of the winter, I guess, like I really kind of said like, Hey, I want to like continue to develop like my air quote's personal brand, you know, because you look at these folks that have like big personal brands and Twitter followings and email list and all that kind of stuff. And like, everything they do is easier. Right? Like, you wanna hire someone, it's easier, you wanna raise money, it's easier, you wanna start your own thing and bootstrap it and have a big launch. It's easier. Think about like Derek Reimer Right. Or Ben Orenstein or whoever, right. Like
Speaker 2 00:04:10 Right, right.
Speaker 3 00:04:11 Yeah. See from Gun Road, like, just like if they wanna do something, it's easy. And like, this podcast has been like my version of like, personal branding and, and I think there's like a good amount of reach I've gotten from it and wanting to, wanting to, well I think you and I should be more consistent in <laugh> showing up here and recording episodes and publishing. Cuz it's, it's a really great thing I think for both of us. Right. And like a little bit of therapy to get on and talk about stuff and, and kind of unpack it in real time. But, but also it's like he helpful to, to folks listening and then, like, it's a good branding thing cuz like, this is the thing that I think both of us are kind of best known for, maybe outside of our businesses, but then like, I do want to have like a decent blog and email list and newsletter and all this kind of stuff. And like all of that is so hard. Like, showing up here for an hour and recording and it just magically showing up next Thursday is so easy compared to like, putting in the hours to, to like create written content. I think that's the, that's the struggle I've run into is like, this fits of starting and stopping has been pretty real over the last kind of month off and on.
Speaker 2 00:05:21 Oh yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, when it comes to, this is the reason that I ended up stop blogging a long time ago because the time commitment to be able to generate reasonable, well thought, deeply impactful content week after week, that takes so much time to really come up. And then, you know, at some point my idea hamster just died. Right. Right. Yeah. I'm like, I got nothing, man. Like, fuck this. Uh, you know, and I, I just basically stopped publishing on the blog there, but you're right. With podcasts. But I mean, even that, like, you, you can still burn out and, you know, shit can go sideways and you're just not able to publish as often, which, you know, happened with both of us last year for a variety of personal reasons mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, I mean, even this is not the easiest thing to do consistently and still have that impact, but Yeah, I agree. Uh, you know, doing any of the others I think is far harder than trying to do podcasting, especially, uh, in this day and age.
Speaker 3 00:06:23 Yeah. Yep. Yep. And I'll just, I'll just like finish maybe this thought with like, it's o like what we did is okay, kind of took six months off pretty much, and are back at like a pretty regular cadence now. I think we'll be every other week going forward and like, that's cool. Like, you don't have to be every week. And if you miss, it's like, you know, the end of the world. You know, I think you gotta give yourself the, the, the view of the long road and, and like the grace to say like, if you miss some, it's okay, you can pick it back up later. Don't, don't just throw the entire thought away because you missed a week or two. That's what I'm telling myself at least. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:56 Well, and I think there's, you know, quantity versus quality too, right? Yeah. So you can be generating shit every week and it Liz literally shit, at that point, you know, it, it, that's not necessarily a good thing for the audience and certainly not a good thing for you. So I, you know, I'd much rather put out some quality updates where we're actually talking about stuff that matters and stuff that has an impact and stuff that will help other people, so. Yep.
Speaker 3 00:07:21 Yep. A hundred percent. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. A hundred percent.
Speaker 2 00:07:23 Yeah. So speaking of all of that, what kinds of things, uh, are going on right now with Casto?
Speaker 3 00:07:32 Um, yeah, I mean, I, like we were talking before we started recording, like, I feel like we have the responsibility to, to share the good with the bad. You know, it's not all sunshine in the rainbows as a, as a startup founder. And, and for us that means like we, we had to let a couple of people go, uh, a couple weeks ago. And that was really challenging. Like anyone has ever had to like lay people off, knows that it sucks, um, emotionally, physically, like the physical manifestation of the emotional stuff is very real. Um, yeah. And I mean, you know, I think that we are seeing the same thing as every other company that has laid people off in the last, you know, couple months is just like, the economy is not what we thought it was, you know, six or 12 months ago.
Speaker 3 00:08:15 Um, it affects growth rates and projections and all the kind of stuff that, that the math needs to, to work out. Um, like the math is different than it was a year ago, uh, in terms of like the, the finances of a lot of companies. So, I mean, the good news is we have an amazing team now. We had an amazing team before. We still have an amazing team. We are continuing to grow despite having a smaller team, which is super encouraging. Actually this month will be our highest growth month in like eight or nine months, which is awesome. Yeah. And I think that like, the reality of it is like you, you obviously like have to do less because you have less people. Um, and so it is an opportunity in a way to really focus on doing fewer things much better. Kinda like we were talking about with content.
Speaker 3 00:09:00 Um, and I think that's where we find ourselves is like, we can't do everything we did before. Uh, and so we say no to, you know, quite a bit more stuff now, and it's maybe too early to tell, but on the, on the net, I think it will be a positive in being like a forcing function for focus for us. That's a lot of Fs <laugh>, that's, but like, I think like you have no choice but only doing the most important things. And, uh, I think anytime I've ever seen that, and not just like in this business, but like in my previous kind of work life, every time you get focused down on something, it's, it's a huge positive. So I think that's, I think that's what we're seeing and, and that's what I'm hoping, um, for us kind of going forward is like just doing less stuff and doing it really well. Uh, and that being a, a net positive
Speaker 2 00:09:45 Yeah. Focus is hard. That during my whole planning period of December, the one thing I kind of kept coming back to over and over and over again was I, I had generated a long list of things and I was like, all right, what do we wanna work on? What's the most important? What's gonna be the biggest impact of the business? What do the customers care about the most? And you know, at first I was like, God, we gotta get through everything here. And the more I kept looking and it, I was like, ah, we can't do everything. Like there's just, even if I were to hire something somebody and get 'em up to speed almost immediately, like we would never get through all of this list even optimistically by the end of next year. Like it was that big of a list. Yeah. And, you know, it just, it made me get real about the whole focus thing.
Speaker 2 00:10:34 And, you know, that's part of why I needed to get the productivity planner that we talked about last time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's part of the reason that I got the, the other journal so I could just get stuff outta my head. So I stopped obsessing about it, stopped thinking about it, because I think, you know, if I'm looking back on 2022, realistically there was a lot of times that I kind of started jumping around and I would bump the team one direction or the other based on whatever random shit I came across that week in the internet, right? Yeah. And that focus was killing me. I'm certain it was killing them, and some of it, you know, was un unavoidable focus bumps, like, customer stuff comes up, you gotta move that, right. I have no choice on that. But there were other things that I, you know, we came and, and did some research on, and in retrospect I looked at that and I was like, uh, that probably wasn't time well spent. Like, you could have done better on that one, Dave. So I, I'm trying to make my mantra here in 2023, say no so that you can say yes to the right things.
Speaker 3 00:11:39 Hmm. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:11:40 And I, you know, so far I, I feel like when I get that temptation, I immediately go back to my rocks list and I look at my yearly goals. And if it's not on one of those two lists, it's like, all right, fuck that. Can't do it right now. Or if that really is more important than what's on the list, what's, what am I losing from the list? Like one or the other. We're, we're not keeping both. And I think it's kinda kept me on the rails so far. But yeah, focus, focus is huge. And, you know, I'm very cognizant of how that impacts our team every time I switch their focus now mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I try to be really careful, like, you know, here's a list of things to work on, just work on those in that order. And I try not to interrupt 'em too much, you know, it's, it is unavoidable, but, you know, I understand the value of that focus and we get things done more quickly if I stop fucking around with that
Speaker 3 00:12:34 <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think like the, the place you take at the next level is like empowering the team to own that focus too. You know, like developer, Hey, don't go refactor that thing that works perfectly fine, but it maybe is not like as beautiful as you think it should be. Like, let's finish this feature and ship it and leave this kind of ugly thing with a wart over here, <laugh>. And like, you can fix it some other time, but don't take two extra days to, to refactor this thing that doesn't have to be refactored because we have priorities and we set them out in a moment of sanity and we just have to stick with 'em now. Like that, that's a really big one for me.
Speaker 2 00:13:10 Yeah. Yeah. That's huge. That's one of the toughest things I think about onboarding new developers onto the team is that, you know, they come in with some bright-eyed and bushy-tailed expectations about code perfection or whatever. And yeah, I, you know, at least one of our developers last year had a little bit of a, uh, well, I need more time to kind of polish this. And I'm like, is it working? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, no, you don't.
Speaker 3 00:13:34 <laugh> <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:13:35 Yeah. We're we're shipping it and we're done. Move on. Yeah. Like, yeah, unless it's broken, don't touch it anymore. Perfection is not the goal.
Speaker 3 00:13:44 Yeah. So,
Speaker 2 00:13:45 Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:13:46 Well, you have some updates on, on like developer hiring or, or, or trying to at least Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:13:52 A little bit. So, you know, the, the hiring situation hasn't changed dramatically. I still keep posting my listing every week and, you know, I get, I get a stream of mediocre apps that kind of come in there and they're fine, but they're not like, standout, wow, I really want to talk to this person. So mostly I just sort of delete those and move on. Uh, the ones that I do finally get to and talk to, I've noticed a trend, and I don't know if it's a general trend or just something that's recent, but I'm seeing title inflation going on with people's experience. So, you know, they claim, Hey, I'm a senior developer, I'm a tech lead. And then you go and poke into their experience a little bit deeper, and then you find out, well, maybe you're
Speaker 3 00:14:47 A notch below that <laugh>, you know,
Speaker 2 00:14:51 And, and I don't know if the expectations have just changed a around those roles and what constitutes a, you know, a junior developer, a mid-level developer, senior developer, a tech lead, that kind of stuff. Or if there's just a general, there's so much shit out there that you can't master the low level fundamentals like you used to. So you can understand the, the underpinnings of a language, the mechanisms that are behind things. Like, is that just too much because there's so much stuff going on out there, or is there a lack of curiosity and people don't care because they just get productive with it right away, and then they kind of ignore that piece of it? I don't know. I don't really know. I mean, it's, it's a different mindset than where I was at. Like all of the people I worked with all knew the low level stuff.
Speaker 2 00:15:37 Yeah. So if you didn't know the low level stuff, like you were the odd person out, so you were forced to get in there to, to know it. And if you didn't know that stuff, like it hampered your productivity. Like something would come up a weird bug, and then somebody would be like, oh yeah, that's because of the mu Texs on X windows and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, what? <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then later you're like, oh, yeah, that's because you're, if you're trying to, to blit this, uh, piece of information out on the screen and Windows, you have to pre-render the bitmap on here using this API call on the windows. You know, if you're trying to do higher level programming, you still had to understand those low level details to make shit work because you ran into weird quirky stuff if you didn't.
Speaker 2 00:16:20 And I guess we've abstracted that stuff away so much now that I'm not seeing that fundamental understanding, which to me conveys a level of detail orientation and also the ability to really problem solve quickly and deeply mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it's making the, you know, because, uh, my tech lead, Mike and I both are kind of on the same page about that, and he very much knows that, and I have very much lived that, uh, we kind of had this expectation, like, we wanna find somebody else that also lives that. And I'm, I'm struggling a little bit on that, and I, I'm a little surprised I didn't think I, I would be at this point, you know, we've been hiring for and 12 weeks, 16 weeks, I don't even know how long that damn thing's been up at this point. Yeah. <laugh> long time. Probably 16 weeks. And yeah, we're just not finding somebody that's like knocking our socks off. I've had a total of three interviews like that I've passed on to Mike where he has actually participated, and yeah, it's been like, eh, okay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, but not like, wow. Yes. You know, it, it's tough. It's really tough. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:17:35 I, that's interesting. Yeah. I don't, I don't think I have any like, solutions for you there. Like, other than the last time we hired, we hired Jesse or lead developer, we used Dynamite jobs, like, kind like concierge interview service. Like you give them the posting, they polish it up, put it out and distribute a whole bunch of places. They filter all the applicants, uh, and do first round interviews with everyone, um mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's like five grand and was just an enormous time save. And basically like, they were like, Hey, you should hire this guy <laugh>. And I had like a 30 minute call with him and I was like, oh my gosh, we need to hire this guy. We had a technical call and our developer then was like, you need to hire this guy. So, I mean, maybe it was just luck, uh, that, that we got that, but like, if you're spending a bunch of time on it, maybe getting some help would be worthwhile. Um, is the only thing that comes to mind for me.
Speaker 2 00:18:32 Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I'm not overwhelmed with a bunch of other stuff. You know, I'm able to balance the, the hiring stuff with my other marketing and sales activities. So it hasn't, like, it hasn't overtaken my day to the point where I'm like, yeah, I, I need, you know, a recruiter or something like that. It hasn't quite gotten that level. Right.
Speaker 3 00:18:50 Right.
Speaker 2 00:18:50 But yeah, I mean, I, I, I kind of knew signing up for this, it was gonna be a long haul and Yeah. Yeah. Here we are. I'm hauling along <laugh>. Right, right, right. And it's, it's still not going that fast, so. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:19:03 It's okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, it doesn't sound like it's a super urgent thing, so, you know, maybe that's a good, that's a, a kind of blessing in disguise.
Speaker 2 00:19:12 Yeah. The only thing that makes it more urgent than I may be hinting at here is that we, we've got a long list of things that we would really like to start accomplishing and doing to really, you know, either add functionality that customers are asking and those are the kinds of things that I could like expand our prices on mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, you know, I mean, it does have an impact to the business that way. And if we could get to that stuff sooner, that means I could, you know, increase the prices sooner, that kind of stuff. Yeah. But, you know, it's not like the business falls over in a month if I don't get these things out the door, it's not like that. Right. So. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just a naturally impatient person, so I'm sitting here waiting for all the cool things that we are planning and, you know, I'm looking at the roadmap thinking, oh, this will all be done by the end of April narrator. No, it was not done by the end of April. Not even close. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:20:06 Yeah. And then I think there's always the like, um, uh, I don't wanna say like the unfortunate reality that like, none of that's really gonna change the trajectory of the business without good marketing <laugh>. So like, you gotta put in the, the reps there, like the feature's not gonna transform a business like you're ours, yours or mine. Like at this point I think it's, you know, they could be incremental benefits, but, but more so like, we gotta crack marketing, I think.
Speaker 2 00:20:33 Yeah. I mean, for me, the specific things that I'm looking at there would be more targeted to expansion revenue with existing customers. Hmm. So that is easier to crack without the marketing if you know that your customers are dying for feature X, if you build feature X and feature X is big enough, you can charge more for it. Right? Yep.
Speaker 3 00:20:53 Yep.
Speaker 2 00:20:53 That's the kind of stuff that I'm, I'm looking at right now. But you know, not, you're right. Not everything is like that and some things are just, just table stakes to keep the customers around and happy, you know, it's more about retention than anything. Yep.
Speaker 3 00:21:06 <laugh>. Yep. A hundred percent.
Speaker 2 00:21:07 Uh, yeah. So I, I'm, we're not going for the bigger stuff than that. I, I think we have enough to be able to market it on its own. So my marketing activities are focused on just finding our ideal customer in ways that are being underutilized right now by other people. So, mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 3 00:21:23 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Interesting. Well, I mean, maybe it doesn't really matter cuz we're all gonna get replaced by chat. G P T, maybe, like none of this matters at all. <laugh>, like, why are we even here?
Speaker 2 00:21:37 Yeah. I'm just, I'm writing the ideal prompt so they can ta so a chat G p t can take over my entire job Yeah. At recapture, including my weekly meetings. Yeah. And then I can just be on vacation all the time. Uh, you know, we can live in, in a beach in Mexico somewhere, uh, sipping margaritas and eating tacos every day, you know,
Speaker 3 00:21:59 You know, on, on two hands, like one, it is the most disruptive thing that's like happened in our kind of business lifetime, maybe, you know, like, it's not, it's not the end of the world for anything, I don't think. It's not, it's not gonna totally, you're not gonna go to a beach in Mexico. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna just
Speaker 2 00:22:20 Like, stop breaking my
Speaker 3 00:22:21 <laugh>, click a button and, and get like 2000 word blog posts done every week that are, that are wonderful and beautiful and accurate and stuff like, yeah. I mean, I, I think we talked about it a little bit before. Like, I'm, I'm struggling to find real applications of like where I use it. I, I don't use it hardly at all, to be honest. I use it a little bit just for fun. I use it a little bit for some content like structuring and organizing and research stuff. Yeah. I don't know. I, I've heard developers are using it quite a bit. A lot of them are using copilot, like built into GitHub more so. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, I kind of am just like, this is super interesting. I don't entirely know what it means to, like me and my business either from a product like, Hey, how can we incorporate AI into our product? Like, I think everyone should be thinking about that. And then the other part is like, how does this affect things like content marketing and seo? I think that, that, that's the one I'm more concerned about and don't, don't have an answer.
Speaker 2 00:23:19 Yeah. I've been playing around with it quite a bit. So one of the initiatives that I started here, uh, in, I guess it was mid-December and, and all through January was trying to do some, uh, bottom of the funnel content marketing stuff for low difficulty keywords. And so I dug up on h's, uh, 64 item list of keywords that I saw that were related to things around abandoned carts and recapture and email marketing that were super easy to go after. And they also seem to have high buyer intent for the customers. And I'm like, all right, this is great. I should have been doing this a long time ago, Dave, you're an idiot, but now, you know, the idiocy stops. Let's just start making some content here. So part of it was just updating articles that I already had. There was a couple that I could use, unfortunately not that many.
Speaker 2 00:24:14 And then the other ones I had to start writing. And it had really been a while and I didn't, I didn't feel like when I was trying to hire the developer, I could also go and hire somebody to do the content marketing. And I've done that in the past and it worked out okay, but, you know, it's more money than I've really got in a budget right now to generate the kind of quantity of articles that I really needed at the quality level I'm looking for. So I said, all right, well, you know, I can write and I know what it is I want to be talking about anyway, let's just, let's hit some of these articles and let me see what this chat G p t can do. Uh, so one of the things I really tried to tackle with it was to make it write the article for me at first.
Speaker 2 00:24:58 Hmm. And, uh, you know, I don't know if you've actually had this had try it, it's kind of, it's interesting to see what it comes out with, but the, the results, even when you like, go through some very detailed prompts, the content still feels very flat and generic. Yeah. Um, but you know, what I eventually realized after, you know, spending a good day trying to get it to write me a couple of, of blog posts about abandoned carts was that I didn't need it to do the whole article. What I really needed it to do was to give me something so that I could start editing, adding, or just avoiding the whole blank page syndrome altogether. Because that's the hardest part in my opinion of being a writer, is staring at the blinking cursor in your editor when you're getting started and you're like, oh, Jesus, where do I go now?
Speaker 2 00:25:58 Yep. Um, you know, whether it's getting the outline put together, which I can usually do on my own, but then once the outline's there, like even just getting that first paragraph out is a struggle. And what I did find is that chat, g p t is really awesome at creating summaries of things, intro paragraphs, concluding paragraphs, and you give it like an outline of what it is you want to talk about. And it does a really good job of putting that together. And then once you kind of get the ball rolling with that, it turns out that the rest of the article is really easy to just let it start flowing. For me anyway, I, I don't know if that's everybody else's experience. That's been my experience with it. Yeah. And so, you know, I was able to crank out a 2,500 word article about Shopify Bannon cart apps in two days with all images, examples, links, and full SEO as a result of that.
Speaker 3 00:26:58 Nice.
Speaker 2 00:26:59 Yeah. Fully polished, ready, published the whole nine yards, and that was working on it dedicated for most of that time, probably about four hours a day, maybe mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, but when I got done with that, I was like, wow, okay. That, that was really productive. And, you know, then I started applying that to some other things and I found out I could generate other articles like that very quickly, or I could go back and take something that was kind of me and have it help me rewrite it. Yep. Or, you know, I could ta have it come and pull an outline out of something. Like, it does some really cool things. The other thing that I really like about the AI stuff is I've used Dolly to generate blog header images mm-hmm. <affirmative> so that I can get some unique content out of that. But I'll tell you, stay the hell away from anything human looking.
Speaker 2 00:27:49 Yeah. Because you get weird, you get like 87 teeth, or you'll get like two extra hands, all that have 12 fingers on them, or sometimes, you know, their eyes look like the whole face was made of wax and it's melting. And I, you know, you get some stuff of nightmares in there, but you know, it, I try to stay towards more of a flat icon cartoonish style. Uh, there's a specific name for that style, and I can never remember what it is, but, uh, anyway, you know, something like that, I can come up with some pretty decent examples that give me unique stuff that I didn't have to go, like swipe stock photos or buy a bunch of crappy stock photos and then try to cobble something together from that. Yeah. So, you know, those two tools have actually made my productivity go up quite a bit.
Speaker 2 00:28:38 And I know there's like a lot of buzz in the whole marketing world about, oh, you know, AI's gonna take away the jobs. And I'm like, eh, I don't know about that. I mean, there's some pretty shitty writers out there, and I think your jobs are gone, like <laugh>, you're done. Yeah. But for, for those that still actually have writing skills, I think this has just become a productivity boost to all of those people, to not have to stare at the blank page and to get things done faster, or to summarize things. I know I've heard a lot of people, uh, you know, Josh Pigford is working on a legal document, AI summary thing. So you can take a complicated legal document, drop it in there, and it'll spit something out and not legalese telling you exactly what that thing is all about. Yeah. That's super useful. Like, you don't need a lawyer to understand a document with Josh's tool, which is super powerful, right?
Speaker 3 00:29:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, man. You know what I, you know, what I think is, um, like Chad, g p t is the, the only show around right now, now, you know, but then you hear like, Ooh, Google says they're five years ahead of, of where G G P T is, but they like believe it's so powerful they don't wanna release it yet. Like, whether that's just like them being scared and blown sunshine, I don't know. But like, I very much believe that like, yeah, Google, Amazon, uh, you know, a couple of other big players are developing their own AI models for more specific applications. And so I think it'll be more ubiquitous not just from a single source in the future. Um, and, and like it will be baked into tools like Notion, has it co-pilot all these kind of things will be running some AI to maybe at least initially just like do things like summaries or transcriptions or whatever, like kind of on the fly.
Speaker 3 00:30:31 Um, I, I think that's the most realistic application of it is like, they'll be a little sprinkling of AI in tools we use, you know, um, not like Google is gonna go away. Um, although I think in the medium term, like 10 years, um, content marketing will change a lot. I don't think it'll change this year or next year. Um, but I think content marketing could change quite a bit, but not go away. I think it'll just be different. Um, but yeah, that's, that's like getting on the edge of my level of comfort to <laugh> to like pontificate about.
Speaker 2 00:31:06 Yeah. There, there is definitely a big shake up coming in terms of what AI is doing to disrupt things. I mean, this feels way bigger to me than the whole crypto scene and web
Speaker 3 00:31:16 Three a hundred percent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:31:17 This, this definitely seems more impactful. There's more real application to this, there's more people using it in a broader sense. So it isn't like just a handful of people all selling monkey JPEGs Right, right. To each other. <laugh>, you know, this is to get into
Speaker 3 00:31:33 A bars this a bunch of people that
Speaker 2 00:31:34 Are Yeah. Right. To, yeah. And they're not like, this is people putting stuff together that is usable now in the existing technologies and is just better ways to do it. And, you know, I've heard about G P T four that is better than GP P t three and you know, they're talking about the size of the inputs inside of there compared to G P T three. So the power is coming and, you know, it's, it's remains to be seen. Here's my theory about Google, I think they're totally bullshitting, and the reason that they're doing that is that Open AI caught 'em with their pants down. And so now they're trying to play catch up, but they're gonna say that they're gonna do something really big, but they're gonna say it's not ready yet, or, you know, it's too powerful or whatever, because they don't want to make you perceive that they're behind.
Speaker 2 00:32:27 So they're just gonna keep throwing that out there and, and, and stringing everybody along. But, you know, in truth, open AI has scooped everybody, and I think they're ready to do it again. And they're, they're gonna be the be the ones to capture the market share of the paid users. Like as soon as they release a paid tool, I promise you I am ready to plunk my credit card down and use that because I could see that there's, you know, just direct daily uses, maybe not Daily, weekly uses that I would get out of this thing in Recapture. I can even see an integration inside of Recapture where we could be like, Hey, do you want a subject line generator so that you can have abandoned carts for your shoe store versus abandoned carts for your supplements versus abandoned carts for, um, your clothing versus, you know, whatever.
Speaker 2 00:33:12 Yep. That level of creativity, most store merchants just don't have the time or the bandwidth to go and think about that stuff. So if you've got a service, they can go out there and say, give me those, gimme 10 subject lines like that, and I wanna pick one. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> great. Boom, there you go. I can do that for you. And something like that is gonna be really powerful and useful and I am totally willing to pay for it. Yeah. Like, there's no question in my mind that I would pay for it. And if open AI is good this year and Google finally releases theirs in two years and it's better, I'll happily switch to Google and just use theirs like mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But I think that Open AI is gonna be the first one out to market with the paid, and I think that they're gonna be the, the market leader for a long time. And I don't know when Google is gonna catch up, and then of course there's always the Google release shit and then kills it two, three years later. So, you know. Yeah. I'm almost to the point where I don't fucking trust a Google product anymore.
Speaker 3 00:34:08 <laugh>. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:34:09 Yep. Except for Gmail. Apparently. That and the browser are the only things that they're never gonna kill. Right.
Speaker 3 00:34:14 I think that's very fair. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:34:17 Everything else is suspect <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:34:20 Cool, man. Well, I think we, uh, I think we covered it all for this week. Uh, yeah. Folks have any suggestions on stuff they want us to chat through in upcoming episodes? Shoot us message podcast@roguestartups.com or hit Dave or I on Twitter. Uh, we're both there every day. <laugh> reading, perusing <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:34:38 Yeah. For better or
Speaker 3 00:34:40 Worse. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and as always, if you enjoyed the podcast in this episode and think someone else in your network would enjoy it as well, please share it with them to spread the word. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 00:34:53 Thanks for listening to another episode of Rogue Startups. If you haven't already, head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show, for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey, head over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
