DeepSummary
Arvid Kahl provides an update on Podscan, his podcast transcription and AI startup, two months after receiving a six-figure investment. He reveals that he has spent around $10,000-$11,000 so far, primarily on GPU compute power to ramp up transcription and AI features like speaker diarization and summarization. Arvid has increased his server infrastructure significantly and plans to spend $15,000-$20,000 per month on compute resources to get through the backlog of historical podcasts.
Podscan has crossed the $1,000 monthly recurring revenue mark, with around one or two new subscriptions per day, mostly on the $20/month tier. Arvid has zero churn so far and is focusing on creating an excellent API experience for developers building tools on podcasts. He has been conducting customer research calls, which have been invaluable for understanding user needs and prioritizing features.
Arvid discusses the lessons he learned from talks at MicroConf, particularly on customer awareness and structuring sales calls. He plans to work on new AI features like summarization and entity extraction, streamline the UX, update the landing page, create marketing videos, and start a knowledge base in the coming month.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Arvid has spent a significant portion of his funding on GPU compute power to ramp up transcription and AI features for Podscan.
- Podscan has reached $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue with zero churn, but is not yet profitable due to infrastructure costs.
- Arvid has been conducting customer research calls to understand user needs and prioritize features, learning from talks at MicroConf.
- Podscan is focusing on creating an excellent API experience for developers building tools on podcasts.
- Arvid plans to work on new AI features like summarization and entity extraction, improve the UX, update marketing materials, and create a knowledge base.
- Defining an ideal customer profile has helped Arvid prioritize feature requests and ideas for Podscan.
- Arvid has learned the importance of understanding customer awareness stages and structuring sales calls from talks at MicroConf.
- Podscan's infrastructure costs will decrease significantly once the historical podcast backlog is processed.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I highly recommend recording these calls, or at least transcribing them as they happen. I use otter AI and grain, two tools for this, for post processing these calls, and both of these tools offer action items that some kind of AI grabs from the conversation and then tells you what to do next.“ by Arvid Kahl
- “Stephen taught me that there is a way to structure these calls. You can set an agenda. You can find alignment through a certain couple of steps and then create these situations of genuine connection over somebody's challenges that work out in a positive way.“ by Arvid Kahl
- “I'm doubling down on creating a really spectacular API experience for people who built their tools on podcasts. The Podscan podcast platform, let's just call it that, which then in turn makes it easier for me to build my own features in the alerting and searching sections of Podscan.“ by Arvid Kahl
- “I think I'm glad I made my choice for who my ideal customer profile is a few weeks ago, quite publicly here on this podcast. It's been helping me a lot in figuring out which feature requests and which ideas I say yes and no to and how I prioritize them.“ by Arvid Kahl
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Episode Information
The Bootstrapped Founder
Arvid Kahl
5/3/24
It's been two months of running Podscan at full speed.
Have I spent 6 figures of money yet? Well, you'll see in this week's update :)
This episode is sponsored by Acquire.com
The blog post: https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/podscan-2-months-and-1k-mrr-in/
The podcast episode: https://tbf.fm/episodes/317-podscan-2-months-and-1k-mrr-in
Check out Podscan to get alerts when you're mentioned on podcasts: https://podscan.fm
Send me a voicemail on Podline: https://podline.fm/arvid
You'll find my weekly article on my blog: https://thebootstrappedfounder.com
Podcast: https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/podcast
Newsletter: https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/newsletter
My book Zero to Sold: https://zerotosold.com/
My book The Embedded Entrepreneur: https://embeddedentrepreneur.com/
My course Find Your Following: https://findyourfollowing.com
Here are a few tools I use. Using my affiliate links will support my work at no additional cost to you.
- Notion (which I use to organize, write, coordinate, and archive my podcast + newsletter): https://affiliate.notion.so/465mv1536drx
- Riverside.fm (that's what I recorded this episode with): https://riverside.fm/?via=arvid
- TweetHunter (for speedy scheduling and writing Tweets): http://tweethunter.io/?via=arvid
- HypeFury (for massive Twitter analytics and scheduling): https://hypefury.com/?via=arvid60
- AudioPen (for taking voice notes and getting amazing summaries): https://audiopen.ai/?aff=PXErZ
- Descript (for word-based video editing, subtitles, and clips): https://www.descript.com/?lmref=3cf39Q
- ConvertKit (for email lists, newsletters, even finding sponsors): https://convertkit.com?lmref=bN9CZw