Episode 21: What’s Your Problem: Writing Grants, Wrangling Kids, and the Case for Boring B2B

Zach: Hello everyone and welcome to the Founder Problems Podcast today’s episode will be a segment that we call what’s Your Problem where we discuss different wins things that we’re struggling on and things that we’re working on my name is Zachary Ocean Banjo and I’m working on building a 2064 square foot house and I’m joined today by my co-host Sarah and Lee

Sarah: I am Sarah Schumacher and I manage components of all the pieces of things that are necessary to build websites and bring them into a cohesive whole, hopefully.

Lee Zuvanich: I’m Lee Zuvanich and I help non-technical people launched tech startups Don’t laugh

Sarah: Great plan.

Actually, I co-founded a tech startup with someone who doesn’t understand tech at all. So actually, yes, it is real.

Lee Zuvanich: Doctors and lawyers and all kinds of

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: who[00:01:00]

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Zuvanich: save the world

Zach: They at least at least they understand the problem You know that’s that’s what matters If you understand the problem the world will be the path to your door or whatever the phrase is So

Lee Zuvanich: better that than to be a developer who just wants to create a solution for and then go find a problem

Sarah: yep. Agreed. So what are our problems? This? No, no, wait, hang on. We have to start with wins, don’t we? I immediately jump into the negative.

Lee Zuvanich: starting with problems

Zach: Negative into the

Sarah: Sorry. Sorry. What’s our wins?

Zach: I’ll go last

Lee Zuvanich: I’ll go

Sarah: Oh man.

Lee Zuvanich: I’ve had some

Sarah: Okay. Okay,

Lee Zuvanich: so

Sarah: it.

Lee Zuvanich: I feel really prolific lately I’ve launched two new apps that are actually functional bulk ledged like really fun project that have People have needed in my life and that people are using that’s not normal I think probably sounds like something I would [00:02:00] be doing in my free time all the time but I don’t I just build out for other people and I work on my startup that is a business but I built these other projects in my spare time that are actually really like helpful and low key going to market in the sense that I have beta testers who want to use them Essentially pay for them And so that’s helping me cut my teeth on branding and marketing in a very intensity way which is helping me gear up for Soma based branding and marketing which is my next phase also I got confirmation from two different clients that they are paying for the next phase of development at some base So like we are really rocking and rolling now and that’s exciting

Sarah: Woo. Getting paid, that’s a win. I’m not even entirely joking. ’cause sometimes people don’t.

Lee Zuvanich: I think it’s the heart of the founder the biggest founder problem of all is being a founder that isn’t getting paid So yeah[00:03:00]

Sarah: Mm, mm-hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: ever

Sarah: because you can’t, like, yeah, you need to get the money come in, or the person’s not paying the invoice.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: always, always a risk. Yeah. That’s kinda where my mind was going. Yeah. I’m glad, I’m glad that it’s not something you’re dealing with currently. So you’re, you actually reminded me of a second thing I’m gonna add to mine.

I was, my win is just that, like, I feel like my team is functioning really well right now. I am trying to fill different, I’m trying to take off all the hats I’m wearing and give them to other people, and it is slowly, slowly working. I still need to divvy up some more hats, I think. But it’s, I don’t know.

I, I’m seeing progress, I guess. It’s really nice to be like, okay, cool. Like this, this, you know. Task got done. I know this person can handle this. I’m turning this person like it’s, it’s nice to actually feel like I’m getting some traction with that. But then when you mentioned that personal app thing, I was like, also, I just, for kicks, I added a monga review section on my personal website.

So I just like made time for a whole thing. Right, right. It was just like a [00:04:00] fun thing. But then the thing that’s, that, that made me think of is that I actually was like, oh, I, I’m kind of too subjective when I review stuff. Like if I’m really enjoying in the middle, like of a manga, I’m like, oh man, this is like a five star.

And then I’m like, I’m like, that’s not five star though. It’s just really fun. I need like more of a system. So I use Claude Milt, a Mango review system, and it was one of those times where like the first AI version is just like perfect. And I just basically changed the, the styling and I’ll tweak it a little bit and actually launch it on my website so people could use it.

But it’s, it’s great. It’s like it, it filters based because I was like, I wanna, I wanna write based on character development story and art like as those three components and then it gives me my final rating. So it’s a little more accurate,

Lee Zuvanich: That’s

Sarah: more consistent I should say. And it was just fun to be like, cool, I just built this thing I needed.

And like while I was in the Fortnite lobby.

Lee Zuvanich: So I feel like that is something hopefully relatable That’s hilarious by the way

Sarah: It literally, that’s what it was. I gave it the prompt. I hopped back in the lobby and I came out and I had a [00:05:00] working review system.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah so for anyone who hears that and is no way or only cause Sarah’s so technical that’s so real for at all who has access to a vibe coding platform now that’s what’s happening with me too I’m like I have a problem I could just whip up a solution the platforms are getting good enough now that I can Throw it together very quickly And so the stuff I built is way more intense and technical and I am using my technical knowledge as well but I’m probably gonna replace my invoicing software next And I don’t think that’s gonna be very hard it’s that’s the era we’re in Just have a problem Go solve it yourself Don’t go for a subscription is exciting It’s

Sarah: Yep.

Zach, what are your wins?

Zach: nothing that cool I mean I’m just I got a a grant award Actually it landed in my my the bank account for the organization that I’m the executive director of

Sarah: Nice.

Zach: morning

Sarah: Nice.

Zach: that like little [00:06:00] ticker on the side like a notification deposit it felt good because

Sarah: Yeah, I bet it did.

Zach: You have to talk and submit so many of these things And there’s the window of notification is for some of them six months eight months nine months 10 months a year to the point where by the time a lot of these award you forgot what it’s even for And they’re like so they might send

Sarah: Man.

Zach: like yeah we’re ready to make a deposit we think you’re a good candidate for this Do you think you can start the program next week program What are you talking about Oh that oh yeah yeah yeah Steady we yeah that’s our thing We yeah we’re on that And so it’s like I have to remember because I submit move on to the next thing so I get the notification that that came through and that actually opens up the window to take me out of a lot of internal processes so I’m souped about that

Sarah: That’s.

Zach: So that’s a [00:07:00] that’s a pretty big one And I think the other thing that it allows too is disability I’m feeling this Feeling of what I would imagine is stability I’ve reduced all the extra stuff that I do I’m focused I’m very in what I want to do I’ve plotted the trajectory until my deathbed so I feel pretty good about things and I feel like you know households in good shape there’s stability there and it’s just

Lee Zuvanich: Young kids so that’s

Zach: things are good

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: my gosh Yeah they they it’s almost like if your life a cruise ship When you have them kids they grab the wheel and they just turn they just turn it They just turn it So

Sarah: Yep.

Zach: it’s different for

Sarah: And the times that they don’t turn it, you get used to going to consistent direction. As soon as you get comfortable, they yank the wheel again.

Zach: Yeah This giant 1000 [00:08:00] foot vessel just making a

Sarah: Greening,

Zach: towards land So

Sarah: yeah. Literally sometimes when they’re like two.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Zach: most times when they’re two

Sarah: That’s actually Okay. That’s a good transition to the struggle piece. ’cause I. I was going to say, the struggle lately has been like juggling too much stuff and multitasking and it, it is like just focus and it’s like you’ll get an email for a rush thing and you, you do that and it derails you from the thing you were working on.

I was trying to leave feedback on some design mockups this week and was like, oh, before I say this thing, I should go make sure technically that what I want to do is possible. It’ll just take a second to check. Right. Well, an hour later I’m like troubleshooting this. Stupid piece of code that should have confirmed something.

And I’m just like, oh, completely forgot about the fact I was trying to leave feedback on a mockup and didn’t, ’cause then I got pulled into like testing something. So that, that was gonna be my main struggle piece is just [00:09:00] being completely derailed all the time. ’cause there’s just too many little pieces of things I’m constantly getting pulled into.

But the other part that’s related to that is around kids. Because mine has been not very happy with the, i, I try not to work when he gets home from school, but like I, I did a couple days ago and he was not very happy with me. And then we had a whole conversation about he, he’s not. He, like, we don’t, we used to play Minecraft quite a bit and we haven’t, the, the main reason we have is we can’t, our, our PlayStation’s too old sport free people at this point.

So we haven’t played for a while and he’s like, you know, you never played Minecraft with me anymore, and you were working. It’s like, dude, you were just playing your game or watching your YouTube or whatever. I was working like in the room with you, but like, apparently that was still bothering him. So there’s just like this constant.

Juggling of literally everything where I’m like, okay, I wanna finish this thing that I was in focus mode on before I had to go get him to school. But he doesn’t wanna see me on the computer at all. Well, he does, but only if it’s on [00:10:00] Fortnite with him or, or Minecraft or something. So it’s just like trying to figure out how to.

Balance just so many pieces of things. ’cause we have so many projects in active progress or moving through things or in different phases right now that are just we, we’ve gotta get through this next season of launches and and stuff. And then I also need to make time aside from that to do stuff with him.

So that’s kind of where I’m like, okay. How do I, I mean, I have some decent boundaries, but I think I need more structure around the boundaries. So it’s not just, okay, I don’t work when he gets home, but also apparently I need to start playing Minecraft with him when he gets home for like an hour or something.

So it’s like trying to figure out that. And then also like, is there a way I can kind of do that back in my workday again? Because I, I used to be better about like, not checking email except for a couple times a day, right? So it wouldn’t derail me, but I’m usually waiting on information and stuff. So I quit doing that and it’s.

It’s gotten very distracting, so trying to figure that out.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s it[00:11:00]

Zach: get it

Lee Zuvanich: that you spend that much time with him though I’ve been mostly a single parent are 17 and 19 now and I can’t imagine them being like why aren’t you playing with me hanging out with me as soon as I get home from school every day they’re lucky some years to see me at nine o’clock at night every night for an hour A whole hour a day is a big deal for any I think working household

Sarah: yeah, we don’t do a lot though. I mean, we, we, we, my husband and I pretty much just work and then he goes to school and then we’re home. We don’t, we don’t really do, we don’t have any extracurricular stuff. He doesn’t do any sports. I need to get him in something, but that’s part of it is it’s like we need to make more time for actual, but he always wants to do like video, like screen stuff.

And I’m like, can we do stuff that’s not on the screen? Because what do you think I’ve been doing for the last, in your entire school day? And he just wants to do more of the same. And I’m like, is there something else? Anyway, so.

Zach: Board games or

Sarah: Working on?

Zach: like because my my has like a similar kind of [00:12:00] mindset of just soon as she saw especially on like an early release day like coming home at like one in the afternoon and it’s like What are we getting into I’m getting back to work Like what are you

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: Like instead of wanting to I don’t know but it it is I I definitely try to make an effort I think I try or tried a lot of my stuff I’ll offload until after her bedtime

Sarah: Yep,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Zach: but I schedule and do 50 of my emails in the middle of the night so it can just go out in the morning So I can I mean

Lee Zuvanich: Feature

Sarah: I did that. Yeah.

Zach: Oh

Sarah: Yeah. Damn. I did that last night because I had some estimates to get out and I was like.

Zach: you can just get that opportunity get some get some you know play Because a lot of them it’s like just quality time you know Even it’s like sometimes I’m astounded like three recesses and PE and come home and just be like what are we gonna play I am like [00:13:00] You are in a building with 700 kids what are you But I get it I’m and then I kind of just wanted to play with you cause you’re a cool guy dad Okay Yeah yeah for sure

Lee Zuvanich: cool

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. He specifically was like all three of us playing together. Like he wants, he wants us to get Minecraft on our computers. Like we’ll all have to also buy it and play lacrosse platform.

Lee Zuvanich: kids

Sarah: Yeah. The.

Lee Zuvanich: that age same age I think were like this is a non-negotiable We are playing Minecraft You have to get it In fact I think Jasmine was like I will buy it with my savings whatever for you Please play with me And so now we have it is really cool once you get into it for I don’t know You haven’t done it yet Sarah

Sarah: Minecraft? Oh, no, no. We played, my husband and I played beta. We are, we are Minecraft early adopters. We played back when you had to set up your own server. We introduced our kid to that at three.

Lee Zuvanich: So you guys already have a world that you’ve been building together

Sarah: We have different ones that [00:14:00] we like. Ha. The, the issue is that we all played on the PlayStation. We have a PS three, I think, and it, with the updates, it just couldn’t handle it anymore. So we, it, it, the lag was really bad and so I can play with him on the switch, so I’ll play them on the switch with it. But I hate, I hate the controllers.

That’s, I don’t understand why they had to flip the AB buttons from every other gaming console on the switch is really dumb. Even when I flip ’em back, it’s nuts. So I, anyway, I’m a, I prefer computer anyway, so I’d be okay with it. We just have to buy the game. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s the, for kids that age, yeah.

It’s the family. It’s like everybody doing the thing together. It’s, it’s really more about the hanging out and being able to talk while you’re doing it, so.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah my kids want me to play web fishing with them It’s a game on steam that’s $10 It’s the same thing apparently You just the whole point is you’re hanging out and talking the game peak is like that too which they play with their friends all the time You’re just rock climbing and helping each other up a mountain But the whole point is you’re talking to each other and hanging out it has this function where it really They’ve engineered it so that it sounds like [00:15:00] this person is as far away as they are in the game And so they’re always like

Sarah: That’s kind of cool.

Lee Zuvanich: It’s very cool as someone who really hates seeing my kids on screen so much try to make exceptions for stuff like that because it’s such a cool hangout experience with them and they love it We actually hung out yesterday

Zach: Yeah that’s

Lee Zuvanich: a win for me too I spent time with my kids more time than I have lately Like it was like five hours just hanging out

Zach: that’s social piece Like my my daughter is as a contrast to me She is a Extrovert in her blood like just loves the very essence of just people being in proximity and talking And I am not that So that is a it it can it’s different

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Zach: it’s it helps me to exercise muscles I don’t normally use

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah sometimes I have to tell my kids like I’m done I need a break Like mentally I’m just done And that’s [00:16:00] okay this is what it looks like when

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Zuvanich: overstimulated but you love someone This is how you tell them you love them but you need a

Sarah: Yep,

Lee Zuvanich: and

Sarah: That’s an important skill to learn.

Lee Zuvanich: Let’s I can make them go play

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Zuvanich: though that’s a luxury for me Built in friends for each other

Sarah: Yeah. Only child makes a little makes it more important. That’s actually part of the reason, like I have to prioritize that ’cause he doesn’t have any siblings. So, but yeah, that’s, that’s a struggle on my end. Which, which you guys wants to jump in next with yours.

Zach: I’ll go I’ll go go go go go All right So for my struggle I’d probably say although my win was getting that award notification a struggle of mine probably is other funding opportunities

Sarah: hmm.

Zach: Mm Let’s just loosely say politically we’re in a different atmosphere than maybe of other periods of time in different fund funding sources that would normally be available are no longer available and it’s made [00:17:00] even some traditional and just pillar of the community organizations and funders and sponsors and philanthropic organizations kind of Change their perspective and the things that they’re interested in There’s less focus on some of the core Functions of site the nonprofit I’m at But it’s just made some of those conversations a little bit more difficult cause you actually end up in the room with a potential funder and historically what you do is a thing that they click their heels for But recent years and things have changed they’re like yeah that sounds really cool but we don’t do that anymore I’m like all right well I’ve done my entire spiel You could have stopped me You know so it’s

Lee Zuvanich: geez

Sarah: Oh man.

Zach: it’s it is just it’s

Lee Zuvanich: by the federal government like for strings being tied now and so now they cannot then award things or is it something I don’t

Zach: yeah it’s

Lee Zuvanich: works I

Zach: it it’s kind of [00:18:00] like their funding sources So like if you were saying like housing for example HUDs budget I don’t just throwing out a number Don’t don’t quote it I actually look it up Probably put it in the show notes HUD’s budget changed like 50 so the amount of money that they allocate to people building homes and affordable affordable structures and things like that then decreases 50 and then that just compounds down all

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Zach: source And so if they have less money for it many of em are diverting the funds and saying okay we won’t do affordable homes We’re just gonna do like bus stops or something like that They’re just changing the makeup of what they’re doing entirely

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I’m not even in the not-for-profit space and I’ve been impacted by that as well. ’cause I’ve had a whole project that changed the what? What they came to me for has like drastically shifted because of the funding

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah I had a

Sarah: lost.

Lee Zuvanich: project that was sponsored by a city and they had to pull out because of funding I’m sure a lot of people listening can relate Bit of a struggle

I think the only thing that comes to mind because I really feel [00:19:00] like I’m on a streak right now with just things are coming together finally it’s been a struggle to get to this point I think so it’s nice to not have much struggle to report for once but one thing has been just getting things in order at home because my kids are transitioning from high school to college There’s a lot of research and work that goes into that They’re doing a lot of like test prep and and I’m homeschooling them still and I don’t have any real solid help So we actually I hired a tutor that was really great at first but then wasn’t keeping them on track or on pace very well And I realized a lot of what I was having her do was basically body double for a DD kids And that’s a thing you can hire someone on Upwork for $5 an hour or $10 an hour $2 an hour whatever so I found a whole slew of candidates that I was thinking about I let go of this more expensive person who was basically a glorified body double and I know AI can do that as well All I need is someone to be like Hey did you get this done Which is what I [00:20:00] spend a lot of time doing with my kids and I need to be in the office more now that things are picking up it’s been a distraction It has cut down a little bit more than I would like on how focused I know I could be how that things are picking up I wanna be in the office All day every day Of course they can’t do that but it’d be nice to be in the office eight hours a day or six hours a day And I don’t even get that done sometimes So I built an app will manage their schedule incentivize them give them points keep track of things remind the end like hold like visually hold them accountable They have to submit photo proof that they’ve gotten their things done And it took me like three weeks but I’ve got family members and friends on it now and They are using it and it is saving my life and now I don’t have to hire a person I might still hire someone off Upwork just to oversee the app but honestly I haven’t to I added a little AI guide that pops in and harasses you and can turn off your internet do your thing [00:21:00] that’s been a struggle but also a win I guess that it has felt like a DHD Teen life and just like the raising of A DHD kids myself being an A DHD parent who runs multiple businesses I feel like that’s more relatable of a struggle than people realize

Sarah: oh yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: It’s a lot it’s like there’s always in the air juggle then you remembered It’s just like this constant motion happening And so building a tool that is making me feel like I’m getting On top of it Finally as a single parent in a very like tumultuous time with my kids right now just managing so much It’s feels really good But the struggle has been getting to this point I spent the last four to six weeks easily just thinking about this figuring it out transitioning us to a new system I think that Struggle of what if this system works Let’s try this routine Let’s try this app Let’s do this is also a constant theme in A DHD households and I invested a significant amount of [00:22:00] time trying to cobble together something that will like solve all of those problems instead of us bouncing from app to app it’s solved at least for now but we’ll see

Zach: Always wonder like In movies or shows or whatever they always have like this paper calendar that enormous paper calendar

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: or whatever and everybody just thumbtacks their to-do list on it Like yeah right

Lee Zuvanich: actually

Zach: It’s not gonna happen I can’t imagine that’s that’s working I we have a phone system that eventually whenever my my kid has a phone I mean we’ll all there’s like a family thing and you could just drop it in there and we’ll all be able to kind of see what’s going on But otherwise I don’t know how people are managing just anything

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Sarah: Yeah, it has to be a digital, it has to be a digital calendar. Like I don’t, ’cause I mean it just needs to be updated. It’s part of the reason that I used what with [00:23:00] Google for like our work stuff is it’s just too hard to do. If you try, I mean we use privacy focused email for personal stuff, but like for my work stuff, like I gotta really integrate it with all these things so that stuff’s synced and automated.

’cause I mean, how else do people function? Like you have to have like all the stuff, like check the calendar. Is it on the, did you put it on the calendar? Like

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Sarah: Yeah,

Zach: of contention Is it on the

Sarah: yeah. Mm-hmm.

Zach: would I

Sarah: You didn’t add it to the calendar, like soon as you tell that you Yeah,

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah We have a

Sarah: I got my husband trained

Lee Zuvanich: six by eight foot whiteboard calendar on the wall right now And when I hung it up which I’ve never had before I’ve always just been fully digital and tried to force the kids to be and they don’t like that they’re very analog children for some reason which I think is their generation They were like what about a notebook have they thought of this

Zach: I think you muted

Sarah: You are muted.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah it’s not really me There’s a pop errors popping up saying things like That [00:24:00] didn’t work Try again I don’t know what the hell is going on but anyway back anyway so yeah my kids will say they’d rather use a notebook than a calendar or a digital solution which drives me crazy cause I need it synced to my phone I’m at work I can’t always just whatever but I got this whiteboard calendar I don’t know because they wouldn’t use anything else And I just felt like we needed something and as soon as I hung it up they were Jasmine said that’s giving me an existential crisis I can’t handle this And I was like I know you have a problem with time Like we have time blindness worse than many people it’s okay if I wrote vague on the calendar Something like time is relative And that helped her But then I just told them like we’re not gonna put everything on this all at once I know Then you’ll just go blind to it We’re just going to use this to track our wins And specifically just one win right down to the thing you want to do every day And what we’re gonna practice streaks So we did that for a month or two and it helps them associate a calendar with [00:25:00] dopamine they loved filling in their little streak every day for I practice piano or I wrote code where their goals so then I transferred all of that oh I get it now A calendar can actually help me with my life energy into the app I built So I tricked them

Zach: Now they’re gonna

Sarah: Parenting all about tricking them in positive directions.

Lee Zuvanich: Manipulation is

Sarah: I have a whiteboard. I have a whiteboard that I never use in my office, like right over here that like, I, I’m so busy right now. I’m like, I think I would actually feel better if I just wrote all the projects on it. Just, I can like, see them there because I have like little cards that I have to do too.

’cause like I’m not in like clickup all the time. But then my husband randomly drew a bear on it for some reason, just like a random bear. And then my kid decided to add some additional stuff to the bear and wrote five nights at Freddy’s underneath. This is this giant, I’ll send you guys a picture afterwards.

Is this like weird drawing [00:26:00] of a guy with an animal about to fall in his head by a creepy bear? And that’s what’s on my whiteboard right now, and I’m about to erase it so I can actually use it. But this never worked for me either. I’m like for my little cards.

What are we talking about again? Working on.

Lee Zuvanich: yeah What are working on

Zach: Yeah

Sarah: I have a systems audit. That’s all I’m gonna say on mine. I’m, I’m doing a systems audit right now, so I’m thinking very carefully about every time I find myself project managing something and what went wrong for me to be project managing when I have a project manager and then I’m making a note of it.

In a Slack channel , and I have someone that’s kind of reviewing this stuff with me and we’re gonna do like some sort of a post-mortem after and be like, okay, here’s all the things that I notice problems with. Where do you see gaps as an outside observer in my current system and tools that we’re using that, where did I mess up on this handoff between sales and kickoff that I should have handed off earlier, maybe to my project manager so that I wasn’t so involved?

So [00:27:00] that’s what I’m working on right now.

Zach: I’m I’ve been working on like a lot of different training programs A lot of

Sarah: mm.

Zach: guess it’s coming to a you know coming to a head is being able to pull down and get all these grants Obviously at some point you have to deliver but then that was kind of like the the operational capacity like If I didn’t have paper for my printer I can’t print anything you know So I had to spend a lot of time getting all the back office in order And now that it’s kind of closed I got one more thing to secure I’m pretty close to being where I need to be I think we’re at a point where we’re gonna summerish we’re gonna do some programming and just gonna really swing for the fences I think I’ve I have a pretty good idea of what I want us to get into with our first house this year and our kind of our first training program So I think we’re pretty we’re in a pretty good shape but like I said all that is contingent on grants and opportunities I can can pull down

Lee Zuvanich: Damn[00:28:00]

Sarah: All comes down to money, always.

Zach: Yeah always the money

Lee Zuvanich: I don’t know what that that sounds more nerve wracking to me than the way I live which is exactly the same way Just not like

Sarah: I don’t think I could do,

Lee Zuvanich: stuff is hard you gotta just you gotta be a year ahead of where you need the money just so consistently It’s intense

Sarah: this is why I’m a bootstrapper. ’cause I could not do either of those things.

Lee Zuvanich: But we own agencies and it’s the same thing we have it’s they say it’s an 18 month sales cycle and I know it can be two weeks or it could be two years and you never know but the average is like over a year long for from when I meet someone to when we have a big project come through typically But I don’t think of it the same

Sarah: Yeah, mine’s significantly. Yeah, mine’s significantly smaller. Smaller. I like to move fast so we’re not doing projects of that length.

Lee Zuvanich: [00:29:00] Yeah it’s for bigger

trust I guess people need to know they can trust you before they give you five or six

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Lee Zuvanich: So for my part I think I already shared a lot of what I’m working on the core thing is Soma Base still which the AI Startup which is what we’re all doing I think it’s interesting to see not we’re all but like in the world many of us it just feels so generic When people ask me what I do I’m just like startup they’re like oh what kind Ai And then they want me to expound on it but I have no interest in trying to sell people on my AI startup being cool It is not cool I will never be cool It’s just a thing people need and that’s where the money is and I like solving Like ugly problems that nobody cares about And really a lot of this stuff is what that is It’s my kids do not want to hear about this It is not sexy but enterprises need data handling and we can do it [00:30:00] moreally Now that’s exciting to me like it’s getting down into the weeds of How do these different projects that are coming in so that we can form a core offering that we can scale And I think maybe that is an interesting thing to talk about on this podcast probably not at a dinner party I think a lot of people don’t understand people who are starting their first startup or they’re like I wanna build an app and then I will scale the app and I’ll find buyers lot of what I’ve seen that has worked in the startup world With friends is you’re actually consulting big companies and you find a core overlap and that’s what you sell really behind the scenes you’re saying okay big company number one you wanna use this thing that most of my code works for Cool We’re gonna do that with your skin on it then big company number two you want the same thing but slightly tweaked and customized We can do that And so you’re consulting It’s not sexy and it’s not super scalable at [00:31:00] the beginning but you’ve got revenue coming in So then you don’t go try to build a whole system before you even get your first buyer You’re learning as you build you’re getting paid as you build and then over time you’re honing in on okay now we know that med tech loves us legal techs not so much and we’re gonna Go towards med tech and they all seem to want these three core capabilities And so we’re gonna sell that And if they want customization on top that’s quote enterprise every startup you’ve ever seen offers quote unquote enterprise And then you just have to decide how far down you wanna go to the consumer level I think that a lot of AI wrapper startups are learning or about to learn that the LLMs that they’re plugging in are subsidizing Their costs heavily way more heavily than they may realize I just read an article about this so if you’re paying like 50 bucks a month or a hundred bucks a month right now to give out away $5,000 worth of compute per user [00:32:00] that bill is coming due soon they are going to start to ratchet

Sarah: I’ve been saying that for a while, like it’s gonna, it’s gonna hit a lot of people very badly, very quickly, like

Lee Zuvanich: be really rough And I don’t even know if investors are realizing this as maybe they are now but we are It’s not the kind of bubble people talk about where I think it’s all gonna come crashing down but the consumer facing apps are gonna get swallowed up by like Claude saying we built all those little widgets Just give us a verbal command that we’ll string em together and you’ll have an app You don’t need to go pay that LLM wrapper startup down the street who now can’t afford you so that that wave is coming And so I feel with that because I’m building for B2B two B which is the safe boring corner to be in So that’s what I am working on

Be

Zach: boring

Lee Zuvanich: It’s the secret It’s a secret to life

Sarah: Awesome.

Lee Zuvanich: Is that it Are [00:33:00] we did everyone see what they’re working on

Sarah: Yep.

Zach: When struggle working on think I think we have what’s called an episode

Lee Zuvanich: and clean No

Sarah: Woo.

Lee Zuvanich: No

Zach: Well no crying on camera so

Sarah: Things are moving. Things are moving along.

Zach: well that will conclude this week’s episode This week’s this That will conclude this episode of What’s Your Problem I think that’s everything Remember everybody we all have

Sarah: Problems

Lee Zuvanich: Stay boring

Sarah: someday. We’re gonna get that

Lee Zuvanich: all

Sarah: timing right.

Zach: one day Yes Clearly clearly