smarri

I get lost in flow state when making short films. I think it's the complexity, creativity, and in person-ness of it all.

Generate the idea, break it into scenes, shots, narrative, how to set up the shot, how to frame it, the edit, music, composition, publishing. It's a great hobby for me.

I remember watching it and I think owning a copy even. I thought it was amazing back then. I do remember some press at the time saying that a studio had enquired about the lead actor for another film (because the graphics were so realistic). Even at a young age I thought that was some publicist spinning a story, but you never know! :-)

Hey, I work in software and design consulting and lead the commercial team at an agency.

I think it's a real challenge you are facing but there is always a way to make it work by evolving.

Some questions:

How did you get leads before and what was working for you until recently?

I haven't looked at your socials, I know you mentioned being in twitter/x. How are you using those channels, e.g. what are you posting that would catch the attention of a buyer? E.g. running a campaign based on something interesting in your space that will be useful to your target audience.

Do you have an ideal client profile and do you already have a sales funnel e.g. how to attract your ICP and take them through a process to closing them e.g. discovery call, proposal deck, pricing and contract etc?

Some comments:

I'm getting leads every week where a business owner has built and designed something with AI, but what they now need is security, hosting, hardening etc so it could be you may need to move up the value chain e.g. often these pieces of work are poorly designed, no accessibility considerations, not thought to good information hierarchy or UX/UI.

I think design led discovery is still valuable; user research, prototypes etc telling businesses the right thing to build in a world where people are just throwing together AI stuff.

I would recommend like others to make it clear on your website what you do, why to work with you, how to work with you, and make it easy to get in touch.

I think it's worth considering spending a lot of time on sales, e.g. marketing, outbound, referrals, campaigns, build a pipeline and so on.

Good luck!

To comment on a narrow point, a friction point like this is an opportunity for an entrepreneur.

In my own experience, which I'd recommend you disregard if it isn't useful for you.

Try lots of things, see if something sticks, it might take years, or decades, but the variety of trying many things is interesting in itself.

Try to connect the dots in your own life, for example what were you like as a kid, what interested you, has any of this followed into your adult life, what about looking forwards e.g. where do you want to be 30 years from now and can your current or new interests get you there.

Having kids will certainly give a person purpose and eat up all of that free time if that's in the plan for you.

What a range of really interesting responses in this thread, thanks for taking the time to post. In 10 years I'll be approaching a milestone age (like I am now). I hope to still be an active father for my kids, to have enough money and investments to feel financially comfortable, to be pursuing more of my interests than work.

Another message gone into the digital void XD

Can you ask for a sabbatical, e.g. 3 months off with the job security of being able to return?

Congrats and good luck!

I got a Masters in Software Development, part time evenings, studied over 3 years. I don't think it's strictly necessary, but in my experience, it doesn't harm your prospects. I think it's nice to have the combination of experience and education, personally. Certainly don't underestimate the commitment if you study in your spare time. Also, you may enjoy the course, work on new things, meet new people - all can be valuable in their own right.

Golf

Congratulations on launching, great idea. Can I ask you about AWS lambda for the email sending. Did you integrate with a third party email service, or node mailer, or just a Gmail (I believe they get throttled at 500 emails per day). Or does AWS send the emails? I'm working on a project that needs emails to go automatically and I'm not sure on the best implementation yet, I'm leaning towards the Gmail option but don't want to hit the limit. Thanks

I built a web scraper that runs in terminal, it was trial and error to get it working. If I was doing it again now I'd use chatgpt to help learn it

As an alternative you could appoint a software services business to build it for you, to your specifications, then they step back responsibly handing it off to your business. It's more expensive but they will be off your books in 6 to 12 months unlike if you hired your own team. You'd hire a small team to maintain the system, rather than a large one to build it.

I wonder if there is a technological way to reduce this number, and also if the number was reduced, how this might impact the environment through hundreds of millions more birds living.

I'm in a similar position to you. I'm trying to do this with Firebase.

I came to the conclusion, personally, that a non technical co-founder should spend the time to become technical. I'm sure it's not needed in all cases, but for me, it was the right path.

Thank you all for the recommendations.