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Hey, I'm Paul Singh. 👋🏻

Launching Beacon (finally) and the three kinds of startups

Published almost 2 years ago • 1 min read

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! 🙏🏼

***

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.

***

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. 🙃

***

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.

Hey, I'm Paul Singh. 👋🏻

I run Results Junkies. We invest our own capital into ~200 new companies across North America each year. I write about growing your startup, career and/or business... everywhere else. Join 1,000,000+ other Results Junkies now.

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