Getting called out, finding new data sources, and how to interpret user research

In this episode, Andrew and Sean got hit up by someone clearly using Podscan... again! They talk about it, then Andrew shares details about his recent trip to Mexico City, including highlights like a hot air balloon ride over the pyramids and an exciting Lucha Libre wrestling match.

Sean provides an update on Stackwise, discussing the data sources they've uncovered and the challenges of building a comprehensive database. Meanwhile, Andrew delves into the validation process for his latest SEO-focused startup idea, weighing the pros and cons of targeting different user segments.

Links:
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:01.71
Sean
You know what we should rename our podcast tagline to?

Andrew
sandwich free.

Sean
No, not same.

Andrew
What is that?

Sean
No, the best case study that Podscan works.

Sean
We should be front page on Podscan FM.

Andrew
Genuinely, we should we should reach out to it's not Arjun. What's his name, Arran?

Sean
I have no idea. I don't know who makes Podscan. I just know about it.

Andrew
Oh, he's he's the dude who's the. ah ah Oh, fuck, I signed out of Twitter everywhere. so that I wouldn't get distracted.

Sean
Nice. I'll look it up.

Andrew
Arlen, something like that, he built he built like class dojo or he he built some like teaching software with his wife, sold it.

Sean
Arvid. Arvid.

Andrew
Arvid, Arvid call, that's his name.

Sean
Arvid.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, if avid has a and Arvid hot scan trigger, we'll find out.

Sean
Yeah, we'll find out. Arvid.

Andrew
So, hey Arvid.

Sean
Arvid call. Arvid call. Arvid call. Feedback panda. Arvid call.

Andrew
feed neck to end there, that's what it was.

Sean
Zero to sold, or we'd call. Alright, maybe we'll summon him for the next one.

Andrew
Yeah, that was wild. So, I get...

Andrew
I forget which podcast episodes we've published because I'm behind. So I like didn't even realize I'd published that episode.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But we published a podcast episode where we were kind of like, I was hating on intro. You're pro intro. I was hating on intro.

Sean
Uh-huh.

Andrew
And then the CEO of intro tweeted at us this week and was like, here's why you're wrong and why intro is great.

Sean
not Really, it's not really a tweet. It was kind of an essay, actually. It was kind of like, yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
But that's the second time someone famous on the internet has hit us up on Twitter because of that.

Andrew
I wish they would fucking promote our podcast when they treat at us.

Sean
I don't know.

Andrew
Instead of doing it so subtly.

Sean
I feel like this is a secret and feel like there's a little secret growth hack in there, you know?

Andrew
Yeah, but the girth hack only works if they like tell people about you.

Sean
No, no, no, no, no. I think that you can leverage it for, for more reach.

Andrew
To become biffles.

Sean
Cause if I, cause if I reply to his thing, I'm, you know, I feel like there's enough Twitter engagement there in in the, you know, get the algo going and, and, and you know, what is beef marketing?

Andrew
Is this like even grosser beef marketing?

Andrew
Beef marketing is when you start beef with somebody just for like the views and the clicks.

Sean
Oh, I see.

Andrew
So obnoxious.

Sean
I say yeah.

Andrew
yeah who's You know who's the king of beef marketing?

Sean
No. Who's the king of beef marketing?

Andrew
DHH. DHH is the

Sean
Oh.

Andrew
The king, the founder, the creator, the the god of beef marketing.

Sean
Right, right, right.

Andrew
That man can start beef with anybody.

Sean
right say well What's his full name? Just in case pods can.

Andrew
David Heinemeyer Hanson.

Sean
OK, cool, cool, cool. Basecamp, basecamp, basecamp. Maybe he uses Podscan too. Yeah. Yeah. Jason.

Sean
Yeah. I don't know. I think he has good ideas sometimes.

Andrew
What did you actually think of the intro guy's response to us? I can no longer pull up because I logged myself out of Twitter and don't want to log back in.

Sean
you know i think i appreciated the thoughtful response um um on it that's kind of

Andrew
You want to summarize real quick?

Sean
weirded I was weirded out yeah I was weird for what's worth a a little bit weird out kind of kind of weird he had an essay first thing in the morning but um um i I do appreciate the the time spent and if if he's the one that wrote it okay one he said that you can learn a lot more than you expect in 15 minutes great for two to three questions two different a lot of different businesses that use intro three number of people who are not connected to sex

Andrew
What are the, what are the top points?

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Oh, oh, three was about this idea of like someone I think tweeted at him saying that like, aren't you like creating this like transactional relationship between what was, what was originally like a pay it forward sort of world.

Sean
And he's like, well, that's not actually like, it's not really paid forward. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, like you have to kind of be in the club and like you, this is democratizing that level of access to these really successful people, which I'm, I'm down for.

Andrew
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sean
four, you'd be surprised at how many people use, how many like CEOs and execs of these companies from like a hundred million to to one, one trillion with a T in parentheses use intro on a regular basis.

Sean
it sounds like also.

Andrew
That stuff is all like a lot less convincing to me than, oops, my cat got stuck in my office. I need to let him out.

Sean
Oh, okay. Which one po boy.

Andrew
Say hey to Po Boi.

Sean
Hi, po boy.

Andrew
This is great podcast content.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. You guys can't hear him, but he's talking to me.

Sean
um

Andrew
Sorry, bud.

Sean
And then number five was like a lot of successful people use it to pay it forward. um um it it's a way to filter out people who are non-serious.

Andrew
Yeah. So parts of that that I like, I like the idea of democratizing access, although we're still limiting access based on who can afford to drop 200 bucks on a 15 minute phone call.

Sean
I will say, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
so like But you know someone can often more easily save up 200 bucks than they can you get into a you sort of special club, quote unquote.

Sean
for sure.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I like that a lot.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I'm still skeptical on how much value a 15-minute phone call provides. I do believe that sometimes charging, like asking people to put something on the line can make them more engaged.

Andrew
And you know it's like coaching or something, you know spending money on coaching versus free coaching. you know People are going to show up a lot more engaged. They've got skin in the game.

Andrew
I dig all of that. I did also think of a use case where I would totally drop the money without even questioning it.

Andrew
So a friend of mine called me today because he's thinking about buying a, a tree cutting business.

Sean
Is. Okay.

Sean
okay

Andrew
And I was like, Oh man, if there was someone who had owned a tree cutting business for 40 years on intro dot.com, like, yeah, that's a no brainer.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
30 minutes with that person to be like, all right, what are the pitfalls of a tree cutting business? Like that kind of hyper specific stuff makes so much sense to me versus like trying to get advice from a VC or a celebrity.

Andrew
Eh, that's, I'm less convinced that that is really worth the time. And just cause people pay for it is not to me convincing that it's worth it.

Sean
Yeah. So for sure.

Andrew
Like people pay for all sorts of things that are kind of just confirmation bias.

Sean
Yeah, that's true. Well, what you're telling me is someone just heard a blue collar intro.

Andrew
It's an interesting idea, but I think like the problem, I know a guy.

Sean
Yeah. Call it I know a guy. yeah

Andrew
The problem is like the tree cutting business owner is so niche, like how are they going to get enough traffic for it to be worth their time to like set up a profile and like manage it and everything.

Sean
For sure, for sure, for sure. Well, ah he did call out Jason Tan and Nikita Beer on here, and which were two people we talked about. Interestingly, he said that Nikita Beer is making millions of intro and his customers love him.

Sean
I do think that, well, and hold on, hold on, hold on, I have a reason.

Andrew
I'm so skeptical of that. How is anyone making millions on intro?

Sean
hu Because, because Nikita beer, I'm pretty sure he does. Nikita beer is one of the people that does like either invest into the ones that he's advising. And I think at least a couple of them had either like reached out an intro or something.

Sean
I feel like there was like some, right.

Andrew
Like he, he uses intro as the gen for his PC work.

Sean
Right. Or his own, in his own deal flow.

Andrew
That make sure. Okay.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Calling that making millions on intro is a little bit of a stretch.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. you know he said that you might try us, my two cents, identify your biggest business challenges and goals, find the expert who's done it before, and book them. I mean, fair.

Sean
I think it's i think it's a great use case. And I thought I had until the end of the month.

Andrew
Weren't you supposed to have tried them by now?

Andrew
Okay.

Andrew
I can't remember what we said.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
I don't know. I have no idea. that episode I don't even know if that episode is out in the world yet.

Andrew
He clearly is.

Sean
oh Oh shit, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
That's what we had the episode about.

Sean
Chimay said, uh, Chimay, one of our designers that, that, you know, that, that I realized that you met on El Camino, by the way, I didn't realize that.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I thought you just knew him back in the day.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
uh, mentioned that he started listening and he's like, there's so much great value out of this podcast. And I was like, really? Are you really getting that much stuff out of this?

Andrew
Are you sure? but

Sean
And he was like, yeah, listen to the earlier, earlier episodes.

Sean
Like, Oh, I guess that might make more sense. Cause now recently it's

Andrew
yeah Yeah, the early episodes where we actually talked about like how to grow an agency and shit.

Sean
Sorry.

Sean
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Well, I will try it. Speaking of like monetarily incentivized or loss incentivized things, how's your how's your stuff going?

Sean
The stuff you've been money. I've been only 50 bucks for.

Andrew
Yeah, I probably need to Venmo you back.

Sean
How? Yeah, that's all profit, baby.

Andrew
but

Andrew
Yeah. Did we do that on the pod last time or was that after? I think it was after the pod or before the pod, right?

Sean
No, it was right before.

Andrew
That you Venmoed me?

Sean
It was right before. I think it was how we started the pod.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
Cool. Yeah.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
Yeah. So, um, think last week I said that I was going to be focused on shifting chart juice to freemium and putting it on the back burner to, pursue some new ideas.

Andrew
my partner who I'm working with, he and I had some time together last week to generate a bunch of ideas. and try to evaluate them using Rob Walling's 5pm framework and like Jason Cohen's, some of like Jason Cohen's advice early stage validation. So did I guess that's really more pre-validation is what Rob calls it, which I think is accurate because it's more just like assessing which ideas are worth validating.

Andrew
So we did that. Chart Juice is like kind of already on the back burner. I've been focusing more on just the validation work that I'm doing this week. So I haven't even put a whole lot of energy into shifting it over to freemium. Do you think I'll still do that at some point? Just because i I kind of want to build a couple of plugins for it and see what happens and think it would be yeah know fun, interesting learning experience.

Andrew
So yeah, gonna go to do that at some point, but it's like I realized that doing all of that work to shift it to freemium is honestly lower priority than validating some of this new stuff.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
Interestingly, Rob Walling just released his course on early stage startup validation that he's been working on, the SAS Launchpad.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So I went ahead and bought it and I've been working my way through the course. It's, it's pretty great material. It's been Solid, a lot of it I've gotten from listening to his podcast and stuff before, but there's also a lot more detail there. And like, I'm kind of on just I'm still like only a third of the way through it and I think a lot, there's going to be a lot of detail in like the next few and episodes like lessons that I worked through so i'm I'm really looking forward to those.

Andrew
And even if he has covered it, having it all in one place to like jog your memory and like be able to find everything is really, really nice. So perfect timing there. have I was excited to see that come out right now. The idea that talked to you about pitched you on that you ended up finmoing me for is still one of our like, I think it's in our like kind of top 10, maybe, but is not the idea that we're pursuing right now.

Sean
ye

Andrew
So the thing we're pursuing right now is in the SEO space. basically looking at, you know, combining SEO spiders, which are web crawlers with generative AI,

Andrew
and yeah different CMS integrations in order to be able to like quickly audit a site, audit a site, generate fixes, and and then push those fixes live. So the idea is kind of like like the long term vision is what if Screaming Frog had an auto remediate button, like a fix it button?

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
I found out today that screaming frog can integrate with open AI, but it's like pretty clunky. So I think for less advanced ah ah SEO analysts, there, there could still be something here, but, yeah, I've done.

Sean
I also just don't think that would be the, like the workflow of a, like a veteran SEO would use, you know, it feels like like to to integrate open AI into screaming frog and like to like,

Andrew
What do you mean?

Andrew
You'd be surprised, man, people love screaming frog in the SEO world.

Sean
Really? Okay.

Andrew
And like all of the like really advanced SEO analysts I talked to like live in screaming frog.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
they live in screaming frog and like search console and they integrate a bunch of stuff with screaming frog.

Sean
Gotcha.

Andrew
yeah.

Sean
Okay. Damn. I did not know that. Yeah.

Andrew
But so this has been, what's really weird about like. this validation process versus chart I'm getting much better data, like much better information responses from people.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So far, I've paid for all the conversations I've had, so I've been doing them all through years user interviews.

Sean
using intro, yeah right.

Andrew
um So yeah, I mean, fair point. This is another case where like a 30-minute conversation, I guess, is valuable. Yeah, fair point. But yeah, I've been paying for them all through user interviews.

Andrew
The next step is I'm going to do some cold email and try to see if I can get to people to talk to me without paying them.

Sean
Right. Right. right

Andrew
But, so I did five of these ah several months ago, and I've now done four more. And, you know, I started off five months ago asking people about internal links. And it felt like when I talked to them about internal links, they were saying like, yeah, internal links are or a challenge, but like,

Andrew
Oftentimes we're just trying to get like the metadata updated on a site. and this time around I was like leading more with metadata and I'm seeing that like maybe internal links are actually more valuable than I thought. And I think part of it is I'm still narrowing down on my ICP, my ideal customer profile. So like -house marketers at like that manage really small sites, you know, don't have a big metadata problem.

Andrew
But internal links can still be a challenge for them. And then like super advanced ah ah SEO analysts at the high end who work with B2B tech companies are kind of, from what I can tell, kind of the cutting edge of SEO.

Andrew
And so they're fine with using the like JavaScript snippet in Screaming Frog to integrate open AI into Screaming Frog and like generate all of that.

Sean
Hmm. Hmm.

Andrew
But my hypothesis right now is that there's a middle segment of users that are doing like ah ah SEO for big companies, but they're not B2B SaaS companies and they themselves are just less technical and less up to date with like the, like everything screaming frog and some of the other tools out there can do. And so those folks seem like they might be our bread and butter where they're the ones who get excited when they're like, wait, you can,

Andrew
give me a tool where I can audit things and then generate fixes automatically. And like I don't have to copy and paste between OpenAI and a spreadsheet.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
and They're the ones who seem to get excited and like light up when we talk about this. But my question is, like are they early adopters?

Sean
I mean, it's.

Andrew
Or is it this are they early adopters enough to like try us out as we're building this? Or is it the like more technical folks who are the early adopters?

Sean
It kind of sounds like you're talking about content marketers at these companies.

Andrew
well, I'm, I'm talking about like, they're, they are SEO analysts.

Sean
Because.

Andrew
They're not, and they wouldn't call themselves content marketers. So they're like the people who seem so far, like the ICP we're kind of narrowing it on is ah ah SEO analysts at agencies whose clients have thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages.

Andrew
on their site. And so like they're dealing with enough scale that they can't physically update all this stuff themselves.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
And they're already starting to use AI to do it, but they aren't like as so sophisticated that they're comfortable like editing the JavaScript templates in Screaming Frog to make that work.

Sean
Right. Gotcha. country Gotcha.

Sean
Yeah, I wonder, I wonder like the level of sophistication that an SEO analysts that like a newspaper has, like a non, like a non Forbes or Miami Herald, but like a more, I don't know, local or semi-local or city level.

Andrew
Like someone who has to deal with a lot of new content being generated all the time, but but they're not like, you know, surrounded by tech people all the time.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. And it's, you know, like it's, it's not like that level of internal linking. It's like, you just have to get stuff out and ranking is still important. yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah that's that's an interesting thought.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Definitely, like I think agencies feel like they have the most the most pain because they're dealing with new clients all the time.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
And those new clients often have like, because the other thing we're seeing is that once you get a process in place for generating the metadata, it becomes a lot less painful.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Internal links still seem to be a bit of a challenge.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But internal links are also a lot harder to get right.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
Because like the strategies for internal linking are more nuanced.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
But it's just really interesting that there's like,

Andrew
there it's looking like there could be this sort of sweet spot in the market where it's like, they're not tiny.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
but they're not, and it's not even that they're not huge. like They do seem to be working on big sites, but they're like they're not as technical themselves.

Sean
When you say metadata, are you talking about like image alt text or are you talking about like schema? Like markup schema stuff?

Andrew
So we're still trying to figure out like what is the most valuable to people, but like at its most basic, I'm talking page title, page description.

Sean
Gotcha.

Sean
Got it.

Andrew
Then you expand to schema markup, open graph descriptions and images and alt text for images.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
And then you like, you expand one level further. And now you're talking like internal links and H1, H2s. And that stuff's no longer really metadata, but it's kind of related to like technical SEO audit and stuff like that.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You remember, um, remember when I was telling about air glow?

Andrew
Air glow.

Sean
So it's all it's not it's not live anywhere.

Andrew
No.

Sean
it's Remember when I told you about my really... I think this was season one, or this was like a loss tape. But Refine Labs kind of popularize popularized this term called dark social, and dark social is when when links get shared online or your brain gets talked about, and you you never know if links get shared online or anything, right?

Andrew
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Sean
but then But then I then I had a thought of like what if you served the image through an image server that was not that was like a third party image server and that way every time the link was shared the expanded link is pulled up and therefore you get the you get a ping on your server and yeah you get the IP address you get the ping at the user agent and now you can set serve the analytics back to the client.

Andrew
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
IP address? Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
And as I started like, like, gaming it out and like doing the design of it, the more I realized that eventually what it becomes is like, like a metadata dashboard, specifically also like you can, you know, the, like I was trying to think about like what like like what are like other things that roadmap and what are cool things it's like.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
if you can A-B test different social graph images, if you can A-B test different things. And then also the nice thing to have was like, okay, why don't we also just serve like, here's all the metadata or sorry, here's all like the page titles, the descriptions into like a table for someone.

Sean
And I don't like, is the screaming frog have something like that? Like, does it have just like a table that you can then also then edit back, like publish?

Andrew
So no, Screaming Frog is like purely read only. And with this like kind of clunky OpenAI gen and integration, you can generate, but you're still exporting to a CSV.

Andrew
There's no like way to link Screaming Frog to your site and and publish.

Sean
Okay.

Sean
Got it.

Andrew
And it's interesting, like, I would have thought that would have maybe been enough for like, so I talked to this really technical SEO today, this guy who's, you know, works with B2B SaaS companies and seems to be kind of on the cutting edge of SEO, like and really knowledgeable, knows best practices. And I was talking to him about like the metadata thing and he was like, I can do that with Screaming Frog. And like, I was like, well, what about like the,

Andrew
you know integration with the CMS or whatever. And I think that like so often for people working at that level, the client needs a CSV anyway.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
like they they You need client approval.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
you need Sometimes you're working with like custom CMSs, which is wild to me that anyone would build a custom CMS. but like

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
sometimes you're working with like custom CMSs, sometimes like the pages are auto generated by code, like programmatic is SEO kind of stuff. And so you're doing like, yeah, like ah ah SEO gets really complicated, I think with really big sites.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And so I guess for some of those people, like auto publish wouldn't really be a thing.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I'm not sure. I'm still vetting that out.

Sean
So there's a, there's a similar thing happening in security, by the way, of what you're trying to do.

Andrew
Oh, interesting.

Sean
if you're at a burp suite.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
Okay, you know everyone, every single like bug bounty person in the world fucking loves burp sweet and burp sweet has made people millions of dollars.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
They're all sort of from, there's there's a handful of like the more popular bug bounty folks who have kind of like become almost like influencers for like a sass-based version of burp sweet called Kaido, C-A-I-D-O, I think.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
I haven't dug super deep into it. They've done, they've spent a lot of money marketing. don't think it's a purpose week killer, but it definitely has picked up more and more traction.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
And I like, I was thinking about it this morning of like how similar of a story this is of like, you know, what, what are the benefits of this sort of like SAS based screaming frog.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm with you. i I wonder if you target this middle market. Do you like do you think about it?

Sean
Have you thought about like turn in terms of at what point do they just kind of go like, oh, what if I just use screaming? Like what if I might as well go learn screaming frog or I might as well just like.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
No.

Andrew
Yeah. That's, that's a ah ah big concern is like, is there enough value here?

Sean
OK.

Sean
OK.

Andrew
And I think like the, the kind of hypothesis is like, and this could change so drastically because I'm still learning so much in every conversation, but like the vision is to eventually build enough of screaming frog, but better.

Sean
Right.

Sean
yeah

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
and that's that's hard to say like it might be a terrible idea because so everyone i talked to is like i love screaming frog it's cheap and i can do anything i want with it and i'm like fair but like it's also clunky as shit like it's it's clunky as shit and so i'm like you know i feel like if this is this this feels like such bad product but like

Sean
Now that that's that's like a signal to me that. Yeah.

Andrew
I think that there, there is an opportunity to do some stuff like, you know, make some things easier. And then I think if we show people a better way, there's a chance that they'd start to go, Oh, maybe I don't love screaming frog as much as I thought I did. I just didn't have a better alternative. And, you know, changing behavior is hard. You know, I don't know that people are searching for screw screaming frog alternatives, although they are.

Andrew
Like they are using AI to generate this stuff. And they are like SEOs seem to, for the most part, be down to try new tools all the time.

Sean
For sure.

Sean
I'm sure because you're always looking for that like alpha, right? So like if everyone's in.

Andrew
Yeah, you're always looking for like a little bit of an edge or like something to just make your process easier, save you some time.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. I mean, I think I think I like. Any time the feedback is like. We love this product, we don't want to switch to another product because I do think that like.

Sean
I don't know. It's like we all love horses and then somebody made a fucking car, you know, and like I. I.

Andrew
This feels like such bad advice, right?

Andrew
Like if someone says, I love this product, I don't want anything else. It feels like normally you run the other way screaming, but there is, you're, you're kind of right. There is something to like.

Sean
Yeah, like.

Sean
I don't know. we all i mean Not that we loved DOS, but then then we had a GUI all of a sudden. and yeah i mean i wonder i like I do think that you you are you are talking to an audience that has built an entire career on this product.

Sean
So that's different versus like, you know, i'm um I I just like pull up on perplexity like what are complaints about the screaming frog product and like, number two is learning curve the tools complex for beginners one reviewer noted that while powerful, the super learning curve compared to some SEO tools.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Another one is like lack of certain SEO features, which had additional capabilities beyond technical audits. And yeah, I agree with you. I think ah ah SEOs in general are also open to using new tools and, and especially others.

Andrew
And a lot of SEOs pay for multiple tools that do very similar things, which is kind of a really nice signal.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
It's like, also we've, we've done a little bit of like pricing conversation.

Sean
Yeah. Hmm.

Andrew
Like when we feel, find someone who like fits the ICP, I'll, I'll start asking them some pricing questions.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
And obviously like this stuff you got to take with a grain of salt because you're not asking them to put a credit card down. But I start, I just ask them like, what's your gut for how much this would cost? Like from what I've told you so far, what do you think this would cost?

Andrew
And then I do the classic, like what would make it too expensive? What would make it feel too cheap? What would make it feel like a great deal? And the nice thing, a couple of people have said, hundreds of dollars feels like what I would expect.

Andrew
and like low thousands. Like this, this community is just kind of primed to pay for tools.

Sean
yeah

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
They've been trained that you pay good money for the best tools.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
So that's really nice.

Sean
yeah

Sean
So here's an interesting thought that a i both my friends Claude and Proplexity are telling me at the moment.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
they both So I asked Claude, like what like, come up with thoughts on how Screaming Frog could be improved. Proplexity was also like, what are the main drawbacks of using Screaming Frog?

Andrew
Uh huh.

Sean
And both of them kind of mentioned this idea of it being cloud-based in different ways. Proplexity mentioned that because it's a desktop application, it's all locally, collaboration is difficult.

Andrew
Yep.

Sean
which is fair. And then for Claude, it mentioned that it's this idea of real-time monitoring. right If it's hosted locally, it's kind of different than being able to kind of ship in on a server and log in and kind of see it updated. That being said, that's kind of what I use Ahrefs for, is that like every week or every day, it'll come back with a technical audit score. um But I also think that Ahrefs and its technical audit is a little bit different.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah, I do. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I feel like people pay for SEMrush NIH reps. And that's 600 bucks a month out your pocket for both of those products, plus whatever else you're paying for.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
So, yeah.

Andrew
We're going to keep doing some research. um think the next step is called email. like I want to have i want to have like at least 10 more conversations to like verify, are we consistently seeing that who we think is our ICP gets excited about this?

Sean
Hmm.

Sean
How are you finding people, by the way?

Andrew
and like

Sean
like Oh.

Andrew
Userinterviews.com, i I pay and yeah, it costs like 150 bucks per participant. Although I think I could get that down by like not using all the filters I'm using. They have like premium filters.

Sean
It's like, oh, it's like it's like intro but before.

Andrew
Yeah, or like usertesting dot.com, but more open-ended conversation focused.

Sean
Gotcha.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
asia

Sean
okay

Andrew
Arangio recommended this to me. She said they use it with all their clients.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
It's, it's like not cheap, right?

Sean
Damn.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
But like the fact that I can get five interviews with people in who have like my job title, the job title I'm looking for lined up next week is pretty awesome.

Sean
Hmm.

Sean
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Andrew
But the next question I have is like, okay, can I get to those people without userinterviews dot.com? Can I get to those people on my own?

Sean
Right, right, right.

Andrew
And will they respond to me and engage with me?

Sean
Have you, you seen, uh, detailed .com? Okay. So detailed.com is run by this guy called Glenn Assop or Aesop. and he's like, yeah, he's like the, he's like the guru of gurus and, and whatever.

Andrew
Wait a second, this sounds, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
And he does these like really interesting reports and I wonder,

Sean
Yeah, I don't like a good like, he has this like, like, ah ah SEO extension, which is also like, really beloved from what I understand. Like, I wonder and if there's some things that glean off of whatever he's been talking about lately. also, you know, like, he does this like,

Sean
OK, we're kind of like kind of maybe interesting for you. Like he does like a you know, he offers like an actionable SEO audit and I'm more than positive. There's plenty of SEOs that just ask him for stuff and they still get a lot of value out of it. So I kind of wonder.

Sean
I kind of wonder if there's like other information you can surface that Screaming Frogs just wouldn't be able to or Ahrefs just doesn't. um And maybe that's like AI powered and that's why you can do it or maybe it's in some other, you know, maybe it's just little trade secrets that you can kind of put into it.

Andrew
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I am hearing is that like while internal linking and priority comes below like missing metadata, it is harder to get right.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And the tools that try don't do a good job, especially when there's lots of pages.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
And so like I think that's one. Another idea that I have that's like something that is tangentially related is this idea of, like and this is, I think, maybe less critical to like SEO analysts.

Andrew
And so maybe doesn't fit with our ICP and isn't worth doing. It's more of like a content marketer, content strategist kind of thing.

Sean
Yeah. Hmm.

Andrew
But like this idea of like content getting out of date across like big sites.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So like you talk about your process one way in one blog post, and then three months later your process has changed and you write a new blog post, being able to detect that these two things are about the same thing, but they're substantially different. And so we need to go back and update this one, whether manually or with the help of AI. It feels like something that hasn't been possible to do before, but maybe is possible now.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. You know, also with people leaving and coming in, like that sort of travel knowledge, this doesn't get passed on always. So makes sense.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Interesting.

Andrew
Yeah, so this is what we're exploring right now.

Sean
Interesting. Yeah.

Andrew
We'll see how far we get with it, because again, frankly, we have gotten some invalidating evidence. like um This guy I talked to earlier today, this like more advanced ah SEO guy, if everyone said to me what he said, I would be like, no shot.

Andrew
There is no market here.

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
The market is crowded. This is already a solved problem. Absolutely not. But like then we talked to someone who still works with clients who are like as large as his clients, but is just like in a less technical firm.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And she was like copying and pasting stuff between OpenAI and like uses Screaming Frog a lot and had no idea she could do this with Screaming Frog, and like might not even like the experience of doing it in Screaming Frog anyway.

Andrew
and so like she like She was very eager to hear about kind of what we were working on.

Sean
Yeah. Cool. Okay. I'm keen to hear your next your next report on this and like where it goes.

Andrew
Yeah. I might ask you, if you have some free time at some point, I might i might run some cold email subject lines by you and and get your thoughts.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
yeah Yeah, yeah, I got you. Sure.

Andrew
You are infinitely better at marketing than I am and just like figuring out what we'll get through to people and like how to phrase things the right way.

Sean
If you say so, I think you're I'm pretty sure you're you're cold email campaigns when you rank or at least your cold email.

Andrew
So.

Sean
I don't want to click.

Andrew
Yeah, those worked, but it was like on a very small scale.

Sean
Yeah, but like my cold emails never worked and not that I like maybe I selling like five in total though, but but yeah, Okay, I have some I have some like really interesting

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I like the content marketer stuff. I feel like we just talked forever about it. I was going to send you a different link, like just to kind of give you an idea, like cannibalization, right?

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Because you're going to talk about like content, like cannibalization finder, like finding is also really interesting, right?

Andrew
Oh, interesting. Describe, explain to me what that is.

Sean
You have different...

Sean
Well, on WOPE.com, a another hot ah ah SEO tool that people started paying for for a little bit, WOPE, W-O-P-E dot com.

Andrew
woke dot.com.

Andrew
I was like, people are paying for woke dot.com.

Sean
Yeah. There's a spot issues faster with smart indicators. And one of them is like seasonality spot when keyword seasonality is trending and when it's losing, but also cannibalization finder.

Sean
The pages that create cannibalization can be merged for a quick fix to regain positions. Basically what you've done you do.

Andrew
Oh, yeah.

Sean
You publish the, you publish it. It's very much a rank tracking ah tool. So it's very much like content marketing and and like keyword based for for SEO stuff, but.

Andrew
Yeah, that's super interesting.

Sean
I feel like there's something like really interesting. Yeah.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, doing that kind of stuff is really intriguing to me of like, how do you do stuff, like just doing things, adding things that weren't possible two years ago that are possible now.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
is really interesting to me.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Also, just excited to like build something in the AI space and like learn a little bit more about vector databases and like prompt engineering and all this stuff.

Sean
yeah

Sean
Right.

Andrew
But trying not to get too excited, one to want to make sure there aren't to there are enough of our ICP for this to make sense.

Sean
For sure, for sure. Well, I have been able to make some headway on stack wise.

Andrew
Sick.

Sean
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. I'm a new dev, but he's like a view guy only.

Andrew
Cool.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Well, not you I only but like for front-end stuff so swapping it all from react to to but View and I don't know.

Andrew
Oh my God. How many times are you going to rebuild this app?

Sean
I don't know. I don't know Andrew oh But in the time that he's also mildly AI powered as unlike he's he's using AI not not I have no I'm not personifying cursor But

Andrew
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
uh it's cool i think like i kind of just took a you know what's his name cody cody the swell ai guy cody stanch no i don't i forgot his name i'm sorry anyway when i asked him like how how they ship so fast he was like well you know there's some like developers that are like kick ass but they're even more kick ass with the power of ai and and to like so that was actually part of my job post online was like you like using chat gpt or using whatever is part of your

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
workflow at this point.

Andrew
workflow.

Sean
I hired kind of for that as well. And for what it's worth, like, you know, things are moving, not slow. but, uh, I'm impatient because having to rebuild sucks.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
That being said, I solve my compound problem, I think.

Andrew
Have you. Okay. Have you, is this okay. When you say you've solved your compound problem, are you still talking about like information organization or are you talking about like getting the information sick?

Sean
getting the information, getting the information. There is, who knew that the government was so good at keeping records of everything?

Andrew
Oh, hell yeah.

Sean
So at first the the dev found like Daily Med, which is like the FDA's database of all things that they track. And you can download all of it.

Andrew
Whoa.

Sean
It's like for over the counter, it's like 30 gigs of stuff.

Andrew
Wow.

Sean
And there's like images of every single over the counter drugs packaging. So anything i'm like deodorant to hand sanitizer to all that stuff has nothing to do with this, you know, what we're doing but kind of cool.

Sean
There's also a database that tells you like all the things that recall get recalled.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
And it just is a tracker of like things that are being recalled anything like Trader Joe's like cinnamon bagels that like whatever sort of thing.

Andrew
That sounds like a great programmatic SEO opportunity.

Andrew
Just like, is it recalled.com?

Sean
Yeah. yeah problem that's yeah You'd be surprised about how many things have subtle hints of like men's penis drugs in there. So there's that.

Andrew
I'm not surprised.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
That's the least surprising thing you've said to me all day.

Sean
So many, so many things. um We're not using that because it wasn't enough. And then I found that there's another one which pulls from a bunch of other data sources called PubChem, which I believe is an API.

Sean
So our plan now is seed the database with the ones that we have, which are like the ones that are more commonly used, get products for that, build it out. it's a That in itself is already a lot of pages of of compounds. Then just you know have a search bar. And when they search for something, if they don if we don't find it in our database, we'll check the API. And then if there's nothing, we'll allow a manual add.

Sean
or will allow manual regardless, but that way at least we have like a fallback to kind of bring surface the surface to compound. And on the backend, I get to see like which compounds, custom compounds are being added. And and I can, you know, if three of them have been added, then we should might as well just find products for it online. So a little bit of redesigning there that needs to happen. It doesn't solve our like,

Sean
pre-blend problem, but I think that's okay. Pre-blends are like, like, like, uh, like Genius Brain or any of the like, like any of the ones that are like, uh, like,

Andrew
What's a pre-blend?

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
blended stacks you can get online that combine a bunch of things but that's something I think we can add like slowly anyway just because there's so many brands online and I don't really care for it's kind of like the point is the point is that people can build their own stacks but comparatively they can kind of see like their stack versus like thesis's stack for for their things because there's a lot of times where like different stacks put

Andrew
Okay.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
a big like a big problem with Qualia, for example, great, ah ah you know very well-respected stack. there' is There's a couple of things in there that you really shouldn't be taking at the same frequency, or some things that you would take at a higher frequency, or like some different levels of like efficacious doses.

Sean
Yeah, that's as far as I got.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
But it's nice to make some level of progress on it.

Andrew
Are you going to need to find a back end dev to finish it? Or can you get it done with like the back end that you have now plus your front end dev?

Sean
no, he's, he's actually more of a backend dev. So of the front is slower.

Andrew
Wait. So when you said he's a view dev, you were just totally wrong.

Sean
I was, I was.

Sean
No, no, I was saying he's a full stack dev. He just prefers like his stack, just his view and not react.

Andrew
Oh, I see.

Sean
Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

Andrew
he he He's full stack.

Sean
That's my bad. Yeah.

Andrew
He just prefers view to react as anyone should.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, except he's like full stack, but more backend leaning. I see. Uh-huh. You can't get chat cn on, on view. So it makes me sad. now we have to use prime view.

Andrew
Oh, prime view is ugly. I don't like it.

Sean
Really? Then have you seen the new one? I'm using like prime view four.

Andrew
Oh, maybe not. Maybe not.

Sean
I feel like prime view four is fine. I don't know. You tell me, I don't know about this ecosystem. Yeah. Like.

Sean
I don't know what what like thing to use when it comes to view.

Andrew
Oh yeah, this does look better. Yeah, this looks better.

Andrew
don't know what we'll use yet.

Sean
right.

Andrew
We'll figure that out eventually. But I think we probably will use Vue because that's what me and my partner both like. ah Maybe, although also I think we're going to use Django on the back end.

Sean
Yeah. Are you going to, are you going to dev this or are you going to hire someone?

Andrew
I don't think so.

Sean
Okay, cool.

Andrew
No, no, no. I think i think my partner is going to be dev.

Sean
Oh, Oh, I didn't know he, I didn't know.

Andrew
Yeah. i think my but

Sean
I didn't know. I don't know. He was chill like that.

Andrew
Yeah, I think my partner's gonna be dev.

Sean
Oh, Oh.

Andrew
I'll pitch in from time to time and like try to help solve problems and stuff. um stuff. um like I think it would be good for me not to go back to being non-technical and like lose the momentum I got over the past couple months, like be able to build a couple features here and there and help out.

Sean
Right. Right, right.

Andrew
But like this one at least, like he's more interested in dev and then I really wanna get better at marketing.

Sean
Me too. Me too, man. Me too.

Andrew
so

Sean
cool. Very cool.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

Sean
Uh, well, life quick life update and we can wrap, go on London in two days.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Oh, that's right. That's right.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Hang out with your team. And then do you have something after London too?

Sean
Yeah. And then, yeah. And then I've headed to Korea and Japan for two weeks in total.

Andrew
Fuck yeah. That's going to be so cool.

Andrew
Awesome.

Sean
Uh, and I realized this is the first time I'm taking like an extended PTO in like ever.

Andrew
Good, good, I'm so glad.

Sean
I don't know. I don't know.

Andrew
i'm I'm not glad it's the first time, I'm glad you're finally doing it.

Sean
I don't know.

Andrew
and

Sean
But like, but like, that means I didn't need to, you know, that means I didn't like, like, like, like, it just yeah, but like, I don't know.

Andrew
What? No, that means you waited too long and you're gonna you're going to get go on the strip and be like, fuck, why did it take me this long to do this?

Sean
I have a lot of anxiety about it at the moment.

Andrew
Yeah, that's fair.

Sean
I have a lot of, uh,

Andrew
It'll be okay. You have good people around you. We'll take care of it. It's all good.

Sean
Fair. Fair. throwing one of my designers in with you for the new project, by the way.

Andrew
What?

Sean
Because she she's just sitting in to like watch you do things.

Andrew
Okay, cool.

Sean
Yeah, I think she wants those. So like just kind of understand product stuff. But it's great.

Andrew
Sick. Cool.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, that sounds great. Excited to meet her.

Sean
Cool. You want to wrap up by telling us, actually, your full CDMX

Andrew
Oh fuck yeah.

Sean
experience. And then, yeah.

Andrew
I probably talked about some of this on the pod last time. but yeah, just got home two full weeks. did a lot, packed a lot in.

Andrew
We took a hot air balloon ride over the pyramids. Pretty sure I mentioned that last time, but if not, oh, wow.

Sean
No, you did not.

Andrew
Okay. That was one of the highlights. That was amazing. Hot air balloon ride over the pyramids.

Sean
I didn't know there were pyramids there.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. So there's I think they're actually like pre Aztec, but then the Aztecs

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
occupied them for a while and then the civilization that came after the Aztecs called the like Michawakans or Michacoans, something like that. Michacans, Michacans, something. They occupied it last. They're huge. They're really cool and impressive to see in person. I think they're the biggest in North America, but I could have that wrong.

Andrew
Really gorgeous, really impressive. so doing that was like absolute highlight. it was like an hour long hot air balloon ride sunrise.

Andrew
were four of us and it was just, it was really cool. that, and then the, we went to a Lucha Libre match.

Sean
I saw that on your Instagram.

Andrew
it was so much fun. Oh my God. we were so on the way there we were all kind of tired it was like Saturday night we were all kind of tired and the we had to drive through like a kind of sketchy part of town like to be frank and we had to drive like way out of the way because there were all these markets set up And like part of why we felt like it was a little sketchy was because our Uber driver was like, I will not let you out here. like

Andrew
you

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
like You're safe here, but like only come during the day. And like I was like, oh, OK. and i think You know, the stadium was like not that far from like the historic center of the city, but we just had to drive really far out of the way. And it felt weird. And we were like, I was like, oh what did I get us into? And then we get in and they bring us to our seats and we're like second row from the floor. There's like guys doing flips like 10 feet in front of us. They bring you beers to your seat. The electricity was wild. Everyone was so hyped. Everyone.

Andrew
having a great time. It was full of locals. It was not just like Cringos. It was awesome. It was so much fun.

Sean
It is literally, first of all, I'm incredibly jealous of like that. That is like the most jealous thing I am of that entire. In fact, I am so jealous, I kind of am sad I'm going to Korea and Japan because there will be no literally right there.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
Is it is literally like but like is it is it similar to like WWE w wrestling where there's like a made up, it's like soap opera, but with like largely.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
OK, OK.

Andrew
Big big soap opera kind of thing.

Sean
OK.

Andrew
There's like all this culture around it. They wear masks, you know, and there's all this culture around the masks where like if your mask gets pulled off, it's like incredibly shameful and you like um and you you know, it's like one guy's mask got pulled off and they like covered his face with a towel like walk him out.

Sean
yeah yeah

Andrew
And yeah, it's

Sean
Yeah,

Andrew
really We were like reading up on the storylines a little bit afterwards because a couple of us spoke some Spanish, but like not nearly enough to understand the full storyline of what was happening.

Sean
yeah.

Andrew
And like I don't think they even tell you the storyline.

Sean
brain.

Andrew
A lot of it is like built up over many, many matches. But yeah, similar sort of thing. And just like the acrobatics man, like there was I've got a picture and it's like kind of fuzzy because like the lighting wasn't great.

Andrew
But I got a picture of like, you know, like they use the floor in addition to the ring. And there's a guy on the floor like 10 or 15 feet in front of us.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
And another guy climbs up on the ropes and then does a backflip and body slams him. And I've got him like in midair head down like other guy, like reaching up to like catch him.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And there was just so much of that. There were so many like flips and slams and and they're like. you know, engaging with the crowd. Like there were times where like they'd like almost land in someone's lap and then they'd like high five somebody in the crowd and then go back and like, it was so cool.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
just absolutely electric, so much fun.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
And the stadium's like three levels and everyone, it's like relatively small, but packed and just everyone's having so much fun.

Sean
okay

Sean
Alright, this is now my bucket list of things to go to.

Andrew
Uh,

Andrew
Highly, highly recommend.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. And then the food, man. The food was just amazing. So I went to, there was a taqueria, like two blocks from our Airbnb that had a Michelin star.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
And I went to another restaurant that's had two Michelin stars and is rated like one of the 50 best restaurants in the world. I think it's one of the most expensive meals I've ever eaten, but it was absolutely worth it. It was so good. ah Just like, it took me like five or six days there to have like a mediocre meal. Everything was just delicious. So yeah, Mexico City is a really special place. It's really cool.

Sean
Cool, well, welcome back to reality, I guess, unfortunately.

Andrew
Nah, I'm glad to be home. It feels nice to be like at my desk and be able to snuggle my cats. and It was a blast, but I'm glad to be home.

Sean
I'm gonna try to play something.

Andrew
I was like, what's happening?

Sean
and i thought i could I thought I could do it and fast enough, but I couldn't, but hold on, here we go.

Andrew
ah ah I can't hear anything.

Sean
ah

Andrew
On that note.

Sean
Yeah, I'll see you later. Bye.