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​Podcast, YouTube, Blog​

Dear founder,

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This week, I am talking to the digital writing guy.

With Dickie Bush (@dickiebush), we dive into Ship 30 for 30, a movement he started to transform writing from a solitary to a communal activity, now a structured course. And one that's making waves.

Along with Nicholas Cole, their partnership propelled Ship 30 to new heights. They emphasize the role of community and social media like Twitter in refining ideas and building credibility. Ship 30 is a place where writers work amongst their peers.

Our discussion contrasts digital and traditional writing, explores content creation challenges like imposter syndrome, and shares tips for resonating content creation. We dive into the software and media realms, highlighting the value of small iterations and immediate feedback in product creation.
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We touch on the promise of dictation software and delve into Dickie's personal inspiration, his mom, who's not only influenced his journey but also become a cherished figure in the Ship 30 community.

This is a masterclass in writing and entrepreneurship. Dickie dives into the business behind Ship 30 and his many other money-making avenues.
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This issue is sponsored by:

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Signals

​Rand Fishkin shared the story he never told before: how he was pushed out of Moz, almost made $14mil from an exit, then didn’t, and eventually still saw a life-changing payout from almost two decades of work. It’s a journey of massive ups, downs, and quite a few asides.

Rand is an amazing human being, which this blog post clearly shows. He operates from an abundance mindset, which becomes apparent when contrasted against his early-life fears, doubts, and self-limitations. An absolute joy to read for anyone who wants to be a founder.​

​People waving on Zoom certainly is corny. It’s the remnant of a physical signal to the end of a conversation. A rare thing in a world of purely virtual interactions for many remote workers.

I also ran into the phrase “Zoom Mullet” in this article —wearing sweatpants on the bottom and fancy professional shirts and ties on the top— which made me smile. The waving, the just-wearing-enough-to-be professional… all of this hints at trying to find both comfort and real human connection through the screens and audio lines that make up most of our lives. When someone waves at me, I wave back. This builds connection. It shows that the other person cares. So… maybe let’s all wave a bit more after our Zoom calls.

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Researches at the University of Chicago have released Nightshade, an open-source tool to poison generative AI training data so that the AI struggles to re-create art in certain styles.

It’s such an interesting constellation: AI researchers from a university fight the “power asymmetry between AI companies and content owners” with tools that artists and creators can use to fight back against IP infringement. But with that, new potential malicious use cases for data poisoning arise: sabotaging competing AI models, destroying useful classifiers (like the ones used for autonomous driving), or opening up attack surfaces for much less benign and wildly more powerful attackers. The AI wars are already happening. ​And its weapons are open-source.​

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Thank you for reading this week’s edition of The Bootstrapped Founder. Did you enjoy it? If so, please spread the word and ​share this issue on Twitter.​

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This issue is sponsored by:

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