Yep, itās Saturday. As much as Iād like to say that Iām trying out a new sending schedule, the truth is that I just didnāt get around to it yesterday. š
āNew Podcast Episode: More Layoffs and a Beacon (Launch)
It's launch day!Ā But, before that, we dig into the latest round of layoffs. Do employees bear some responsibility?
āBeacon is finally going live. It transcibes millions of podcasts to discover trending topics (think "United Airlines" or "Roe v Wade"). Soon, youāll 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! šš¼
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Itās never been easier to build something new. Itās never been harder to get it off the ground.
Iāve spent the last 3-4 weeks writing the backend code to crawl, transcribe, index and summarize podcasts. On the one hand, itās incredible to see just how much a solo developer can build with the cloud and various APIs.
On the other hand, itās surprising to realize just how quickly all those servicesā costs can skyrocket with a modest amount of usage. (Iām looking at you, Google Firebase.)
Itās got me thinking that there are three kinds of startups now.
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Beacon Feedback?
I have to admit that Iām not proud of the first version of Beacon youāre seeing but, with most of the backend work done now, itās time to build in public. š
Thereās a number of features still hidden while I work out the kinks. Thereās almost certainly a bunch of stuff thatās 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? Iāll take the good, bad and ugly ā you wonāt hurt my feelings. š
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Thatās it for now, have a great weekend. Iāll be over here mean-mugging one of my neighbors and celebrating my middle kiddoās 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.