From Anxiety to Freedom: How Everyone Can Own Their Own Small Business in the AI Era | A Conversation with Saito, Co-founder of Yingdi Hacker and Podwise

十字路口Crossing·June 16, 2024·0·0

"Crossing" wants to find, interview, and bring together proactive actors in the AI era.

"Crossing" wants to find, interview, and bring together the active doers of the AI era. This episode's guest, Saito, is exactly such a doer — he podcasts, builds startups, writes books, and has built one of China's most active indie developer communities, gathering a large group of similarly active doers around him.

Episode Introduction

Saito[1] is co-host of the podcast "Hard Hacker[2]" and co-founder of the AI-powered podcast product Podwise[3]. "Hard Hacker" is a show about Indie Hacker stories, featuring many compelling tales of independent developers; Podwise is an AI-based podcast product that, according to public information, reached $12,000 ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) in just two months. Recently, Saito and his team also distilled their startup lessons into a book: Hard Hacker: The Journey to $12,000 ARR in Two Months[4].

In this episode, we chat with Saito about Hard Hacker's story of podcasting, building an AI-powered podcast product, and writing a book. What impressed us most was his team's synthesis of how indie developers should approach marketing — incredibly valuable reference material.

We also discuss his observations on the indie developer community, and he shares some success stories from independent developers, hoping to encourage more people with rational analysis and positive energy. If you're planning to build your own small business in the AI era, this episode will give you plenty of inspiration.

🎬 Episode Timeline

02:06 Part 1: Introducing Hard Hacker

02:42 How the three founders met, and their first startup experience
04:32 Why they decided to start Hard Hacker
06:25 What changed, and finding inner peace in their second venture
07:00 Where to observe the daily lives of indie developers
09:07 How the "Hard Hacker Interview" series came about

10:23 Part 2: Writing a Book From Startup Experience

11:55 A small book distilled from real experience: how the podcast app Podwise reached $12,000 ARR in two months
13:40 What is the podcast app Podwise?
15:55 Deep dive into the book's contents — which parts were learned from scratch
16:25 Key lessons on marketing and growth for indie developers
17:00 Go where leverage is low
17:31 Go where there's a forum: engage, reply with substantive content, capture long-tail traffic
25:08 Three principles of content marketing: entertaining, relatable, useful
26:23 Five must-know things about large language models
28:45 The process of finding inspiration for Podwise
29:51 Ideas abandoned during product consideration
32:18 Why they built Podwise
37:40 Key steps in Podwise's PMF journey
40:05 Do Indie Hackers no longer need product managers?
41:42 For an AI product, it first has to be a product

42:32 Part 3: Observations on the Indie Developer Community

43:37 How much can China's highest-earning indie developer make in a year?
44:27 Anxiety and freedom — the state of indie developers
45:44 Indie developer success story: Owen[6], founder of Immersive Translate[5]
46:31 Indie developer success story: Dao[8], founder of Minimal Clock[7]
47:54 Common traits among indie developers
50:00 The biggest challenges indie developers face, and how to overcome them
53:42 Great products that haven't been discovered yet
55:34 Common characteristics of under-promoted products
57:07 The benefits of becoming a KOL yourself
58:56 If you're considering becoming a KOL for indie developers, start outputting content now, then build in public
1:02:07 Classic build in public cases
1:05:50 @levelsio[9], a practitioner of indie developer spirit and commerce

Subscribe to the "Crossing" podcast on Xiaoyuzhou[10]

🚦 We follow the industry shifts and entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new wave of AI technology. "Crossing" is Steve Jobs' metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming industries across the board. We find, interview, and bring together the "active doers" of the AI era, and with them, explore and embrace the new changes and new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: Co-founder of The Fair/Tangdao, also an active doer diving into AI, Jike[11], A Self-Introduction by Koji[12]

👧🏻 Host Ronghui: Works at a tech VC, former Silicon Valley correspondent for CBNweekly, Jike[13]