Launching Beacon (finally) and the three kinds of startups

Yep, it’s Saturday. As much as I’d like to say that I‘m trying out a new sending schedule, the truth is that I just didn’t get around to it yesterday. 😅

​New Podcast Episode: More Layoffs and a Beacon (Launch)

It's launch day! But, before that, we dig into the latest round of layoffs. Do employees bear some responsibility?

​Beacon is finally going live. It transcibes millions of podcasts to discover trending topics (think "United Airlines" or "Roe v Wade"). Soon, you’ll be able to do a full text search across all transcripts too.

Grab it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts or Google Podcasts -- and let me know what you think! 🙏🏼

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It’s never been easier to build something new. It’s never been harder to get it off the ground.

I’ve spent the last 3-4 weeks writing the backend code to crawl, transcribe, index and summarize podcasts. On the one hand, it’s incredible to see just how much a solo developer can build with the cloud and various APIs.

On the other hand, it’s surprising to realize just how quickly all those services’ costs can skyrocket with a modest amount of usage. (I’m looking at you, Google Firebase.)

It’s got me thinking that there are three kinds of startups now.

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Beacon Feedback?

I have to admit that I’m not proud of the first version of Beacon you’re seeing but, with most of the backend work done now, it’s time to build in public. 👀

There’s a number of features still hidden while I work out the kinks. There’s almost certainly a bunch of stuff that’s broken (eg, that 404 error when you click the verification button in your email).

Would you mind taking a look and telling me what you think? I’ll take the good, bad and ugly — you won’t hurt my feelings. 🙃

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That’s it for now, have a great weekend. I’ll be over here mean-mugging one of my neighbors and celebrating my middle kiddo’s 3rd birthday.

-P

PS- I've been dialing up the angel investing once again (closed a couple of new investments over the last month, hoping to close 2-3 more this next week) including Kolkata Chai which has already raised a $1M+ from me and a few other interesting people. You can invest in Kolkata Chai (on the same terms as me) until next Friday.