Danny Postma

Transcription:

Rob:

Yo. Danny, welcome to the show, my man.

Danny:

What’s up? Thank you for inviting me and having me here.

Rob:

Your hometown Gronening is known as the world cycling city. Around 50% of its residents commute using a bicycle. I hear cyclists have priority over everyone in the whole of Holland.

Danny:

It’s true mate. There is not even cars allowed in the city center of my country, so I guess priority.

Yeah. Yeah, you, you’re not even allowed to go there with your car . It’s, it’s really nice. It’s way different than Bali for sure.

Rob:

That’s great. I mean, in South Africa we have this hierarchy, which is like mini bus, bus, taxi, BMWs, trolleys.

Danny:

Yeah.

Rob:

Then cyclists right at the bottom, dude. So Dude, you need to come to South Africa.

We need a jam. And I know it’s on your list.

Danny:

Yep, for sure. Definitely on the list.

Rob:

Okay, so let’s just get right into a fun intermission. It’s called, Overrated, Underrated. I’m gonna give you a topic, a brand, a person, and all you need to do is quick fire back. If you think it’s overrated, underrated, or properly rated

Danny:

Bring it on.

Rob:

Pieter Levels?

Danny:

Underrated

Rob:

Copyright laws?

Danny:

Properly rated.

Rob:

Twitter?

Danny:

Underrated.

Rob:

Elon Musk?

Danny:

Overrated. Especially after today.

Rob:

Poffertjies cheese?

Danny:

Underrated

Rob:

Dot com domains?

Danny:

Underrated. You need that.

Rob:

Canngu?

Danny:

Mmm, overrated by far. I need to get out of here.

Rob:

Figma…

Danny:

Guess properly rated. Yeah.

Rob:

ChatGPT?

Danny:

Overrated

Rob:

Working in public?

Danny:

Mmm. Underrated.

Rob:

Formula one?

Danny:

Overrated.

Rob:

The Metaverse?

Danny:

Overrated.

Rob:

Crypto?

Danny:

I say overrated. Let’s keep it at that one.

Rob:

And finally, Artificial Intelligence?

Danny:

Underrated.

Rob:

So you made 50,000 US dollars in your first two weeks with Profile Picture dot. ai.

Danny:

Mm-hmm.

Rob:

How is it doing right now?

Danny:

It’s absolutely, well, it’s still, it’s still going on, but margins have been absolutely going to shit since Lensa is offering it for $2.99, now, which is under the cost, and they’re using it as a loss leader.

So they’re basically being the Amazon of AI at the moment.

Rob:

Oh man.

Danny:

But still going on few dozens of sales a day and working on the next project now. Cause app avatars are gonna be commoditized.

Rob:

We’ve got a question here from Jay Neal Delal from the Design NBA podcast. You were one of the early movers with Profile Picture.ai, and you made money and other people are seeing your success and they’re creating clones. Eventually, there’d be a lot of clones that I feel it might affect your bottom line. So how do you foresee that? Is it more of like in the short term, you’re trying to max out how much money you can make, or you feel like long term, this could be something that can bring you a sustainable source of revenue?

Danny:

I mean, the, I think I’m, I got lucky that I chose the Provo picture name because there’s quite a lot of SEO traffic, searching for people for Provo pictures. So long term there’s gonna be sales. But this whole avatar thing, there’s like hundreds of apps in the app store right now. It’s, it’s all gonna be fun.

Now everyone’s posing it on social media, but after Christmas, everyone’s gonna be done with this. Like no one wants to see this in their feed anymore. So yeah, you gotta milk it now you gotta get the revenue out and then build product based on what people really want, and that’s gonna be the the future sustainable one.

Rob:

So how do you get a competitive advantage when you’re using open source models, especially when sharing them with funded competitors? Who can run it at a loss, like you were saying, to gain early market share. How do you get this edge?

Danny:

I think you can look at Jasper .Ai. The the company I sold my sold Headline.com too.

I mean, they all use the same tech, they all use the same AI like Copy.AI and whatever All these new hip AI writers are, I think they’re looking at, how I see the team is they’re really good at marketing and their UI is really, really freaking crisp. So, if everyone’s using the same tools. Yeah, you need to market it and you need to have a nice tool cuz your only differentiator are both those two.

So if your UI sucks, like why would anyone use your tool if they can just go to someone else?

Rob:

Saw some people on Twitter talking about how, you know, you were a first mover with levels and then all of a sudden they came in and then they took over all the hype and made a. Anything cheaper, but surely it’s fair game. When they’ve spent the millions in investing in the team, they’ve got all their distribution channels like locked.

Danny:

I mean, they’ve been building their, for example, like Lensa said, they built their app six, six years ago, so they already had millions and millions and millions of people have the app. You just put a push message out there and be like, Hey, you can make your magic avatars now. Like they had the distribution.

Rob:

It’s like overnight.

Danny:

I, I guess the mistake I made is I don’t know how to make mobile. I should have built a mobile app in the first week, hired someone to build it cuz all these search interests is now on the app store. Like people are not googling for it anymore. Look at all these apps. They’re like, they have so many downloads.

And I’m not on the app store, so I miss out on all of them.

Rob:

That’s so interesting. So a few weeks back you gave yourself around 10 days to learn to build a React, React app, so you could compete here in the mobile space. Yep. So too late, but still good learning?

Danny:

I mean, I, I, when, when all this hype is over and I’ve, I’ve I’ve most time over, I would love to learn how to build the app.

I got pretty far, but I think now the hype is over, like it’s a waste of time. I need to focus on SEO now, be the first in that market.

Rob:

So I know you sort of swung back into, you know, the StockAI.com project and you said you’ve had a few eureka moments, and I’ve got a bigger question here. Do you feel that if you stayed still after the Lensa, news dropped.

They were making a million dollars a day and, and you, you went offline and you processed everything. Do you feel like you would’ve got to the same places now with this eureka moment versus if you were like, I’m building a mobile app in 10 days, I’m staying proactive.

Danny:

Nah, but this is like, this is the most, the most interesting and most fun part of startups.

Like when it happened to me with Headlime, I got cloned, people copied me and I was. I could have, I felt shit for like a day, two days. I’m like, fuck, I finally built something and then people clone it. People stealing it. This is, this is bullshit, but Headlime version 2.0 would never have been built. And for everyone listening to this Headlime is GBT three AI copywriter that I sold two years back without, like all the clones, I wouldn’t have the, the drive to build the actual product.

I would’ve just sit down, got the money in, probably chill maybe never feel like. Motivated to build the next step. So this is, this is like the moments where you and Lensa, they, they’re going so hard. Like I’ve, I’m learning so many things of it. I had my wife, she went to contact a shit ton of influencers and let them post on their social media, which got a massive amount of traffic.

So that’s something we got out of our comfort shell . Tried out those things. I need to do app building. So like you learn a lot of from those moments.

Rob:

So rewinding a little, you sold, you know, Headlime, your 2020 project for, you know, a solid seven figure US dollar amount. And I’ve seen you mention on Twitter multiple times, you’re not financially independent.

What exactly does that mean and what did you do with the money?

Danny:

I mean, I reckon it’s like you don’t have to work anymore, so you don’t have to do things you don’t like. So for me, the start of adventure is mostly focusing on like the nice things. Before when I didn’t have it, I was always stressing, making like decisions based on short-term things instead of long-term things.

And now it’s basically like you can focus, learn new things. So chilling that way. Most of money. I, I, I haven’t done anything. I think I bought a new laptop from it, and bought a house. That’s about it. I invested everything of it. I don’t see it as money. For me, I see that this money as retirement to pay out dividends with, and now with these new startups, it’s more as a motivation to live like a nicer life now.

As like a, the financials are already there. Now we’re in the money to have like a more comfortable life . Fly back home more often, for example, stuff like that.

Rob:

So would you say you were conservative with your money?

Danny:

My parents would be proud.

Rob:

So, so what financial advice do you have for anyone else walking out of a sweet exit?

And furthermore, in hindsight, do you have, would’ve you negotiated anything different with Jasper? I know you have a non-compete until 2024.

Danny:

So I got, I was really burned out when I sold it, so I really wanted to get it over with. So I, I didn’t do much financial advice. I’m happy I hired a lawyer to actually check my contracts to make sure there’s like certain percent in there to make it extra solid.

But I should have said that like tax wise, you wanna consult someone before you’re selling a company, not after you’re selling a company. So yeah, hire and contact people who’ve done it before, maybe if we’re in negotiations. Cause I basically just call the number, they were like, okay. And then we went through it, like I could, maybe I’ve gotten double but not complaining man, it went fast. I sold it within three weeks. I worked for them for one week and after four weeks it was done.

Rob:

That’s absolutely brilliant. So since, since you gave half to your government, how many bike lanes do you think you made?

Danny:

So actually man. Yeah. It’s actually 50%. No, we’re, we’re ,we’re contesting it with the government now, cuz I haven’t been in Holland for four years.

Okay. And Dutch government basically says if you have been out of the country for six months, you are not a tax resident anymore. So we’re fighting that. So I hope to keep it, it’s been two years, I don’t know yet. So it’s all locked up on a fucking bank account.

Rob:

That could, that could be some good news.

Danny:

Fingers crossed man.

Rob:

We got a question here from Ernest Mulders. One of the projects after Headlime was Web three related. Which didn’t became a big success, if I’m correct. With all the recent success for the AI related stuff, are you still a believer on web three and would you attempt something new in that field or isn’t it indie ready yet?

Danny:

So what I loved about it is that it’s pro, it’s programmable money. Basically it’s on the blockchain. You can move money, you can have it interact with things, you can have ownership, which is amazing for being able to build all these kind of different projects, have certain ownership, have people create together in a company.

The thing that I found out after four or five months in is it’s, you cannot update a smart contract. So if you put in one buck and people put in like millions of dollars and there’s one leak, they’re gonna lose all the money. So it’s like if you are entrepreneurs like me and you like to ship within one day, you like built an up in 30 days, like it took me three months to get one small contract out cuz I had to do the security for it.

Like it was so slow that I went, it just went mental for me. I was like, this is not for me man.

Rob:

This is not fast enough.

Danny:

I need to, I need to find something else. Which makes sense cuz you don’t want to like let people lose the money. You need a good contract.

Rob:

I wanna break into second submission. It’s called No Context.

So you simply shoot back, either of the two options I give you. I’m not gonna give you any context. You don’t have to explain anything. You just gimme one of the two options. You got it?

Danny:

I’ve been hearing it on the podcast. Let’s see how I do on it.

Rob:

Nandos or Nasi Goreng ?

Danny:

Nandos.

Rob:

Double Bagus or baie lekker? ?

Danny:

Lekker, lekker of course. You did some research.

Rob:

Ether or Bitcoin?

Danny:

Oh, yoh, yoh, yoh.

Yoi. Ether. I’m gonna get killed for this.

Rob:

Webflow or Framer?

Danny:

Webflow

Rob:

Crypto craze or AI craze?

Danny:

AI craze.

Rob:

Call of Duty, modern warfare, or Black ops.

Danny:

Black ops. Try out for the win

Rob:

Poffertjies or stroop waffle?

Danny:

Man, you’re killing me with these questions I have to. People keep sending me. Okay. No context right?

Poffertjies, no context.

Rob:

Scooters or motorbikes?

Danny:

Motorbikes.

Rob:

Apple or hugging face?

Danny:

Apple.

Rob:

MRR or open source?

Danny:

Open source.

Rob:

Ooh. That’s a me hesitation if I ever heard one in.

Danny:

Yeah. Even though, even, even, even though I don’t do it myself, we cannot live without these people.

Rob:

Yeah. No respect. Okay. So if I got my calculations correct, you are leasing, StockAI.com domain for $300 a month on a five year contract, that’s $18,000. Tell me a little bit more about domain leasing. Is this changing the game?

Danny:

So, I didn’t know about this. I, I just thought like, okay, you got a copy.ai, StockAI.com will be an amazing name for a stock photo website that does ai is like super sharp, super crisp.

The domain name was 20 k. I was like that this is, this is mental. And I went to the website and said, you can pay it in 60 installments, 60 months, and you only paid $300. And I was like, this, her name is brilliant. Yeah. It’s a banger. If this ID doesn’t work, if it’s like the I, if I cannot validate it, I literally paid for two months of domain name for $600.

I don’t like, I don’t have to extend it. I can cancel it any time and I lose the domain name. I just, I get the domain name after 60 months, then it’s mine after paying everything off. If it’s a successful business, you can make millions with it. Yeah. Then 20 K for a good brand name is great. If it doesn’t work, you only lost like a few hundred bucks.

So I was like, this is, this is genius.

Rob:

There’s no 12 month contract on that. It’s just minimum monthly on monthly?

Danny:

I can literally be now, okay guys, I’m done. I don’t want it anymore and I don’t have to pay anymore. And the guy gets a domain name back, he can lease it out again to someone else. That’s how it works.

Rob:

It’s, it’s crazy to think that the, it’s just called the cost price.com $20 a year. The guy who’s got that is now leasing until he get a 300 there. He, he launches it for one month and six months later gets another 300. That is the, the biggest passive income probably existing in the online hustle right now.

Danny:

I mean, there’s digital real estate without having to do any up updates of your, like upgrades of your house,

Rob:

Do you feel dot coms are still worth investing in?

I remember when you upgraded Headlime.io to Headlime.com. How much was that dot com?

Danny:

And I thought it was expensive. I mean, at, at the time it was a luck cuz it was 10% of the money I earned with her. I was like, I’m crazy for doing this. I was asking my friends like, am I, am I nuts? They were like, yeah, that’s a bit expensive.

Because my top Google query was headline dot io headline eo. Like people didn’t know what my domain name was.

Rob:

No ways.

Danny:

So they were just google headlime.com, like, com on Google. So I was like, I just need to get like security.com domain name.

Rob:

That’s wild.

Danny:

Its you missing out money, man.

Rob:

So, so do you think, you know, in hindsight rewinding looking macro, do you feel that if you continued on the IO domain, do you feel your exit would’ve been influenced?

Danny:

Well, someone could have stolen the.com domain name. I built a competitor in it or whatever, plus an IO domain. Yeah. They didn’t buy me for my domain name, so I don’t know. Not sure if this instance it made a difference, but I think for a lot of companies it would make a difference for sure.

Rob:

Do you feel like there’s a whole bunch of VCs. Just skimming product hunt filtering, good, good dot coms. Like, these guys are serious. These guys are serious. These guys aren’t serious, they have a dot net or dot io or,

Danny:

I wouldn’t know because you, you can start with a dot io and then upgrade to a dot com

Rob:

So that that would actually be your advice, right?

Danny:

Yeah. But so there was someone on Twitter Damon he bought his dot io domain name cuz his, his company’s testimonial.so. And people kept going to the io and dot com website. Like he, he, he literally bought the IO domain name for 30K. He put an affiliate link on it and then basically earned the money back from people mistyping already, cuz he could calculate how much money he got from people typing in the wrong url. So it was worth it for him to pay the 30K as a business.

Rob:

That’s insane. 30. That’s the most expensive.io of all time probably.

Danny:

It’s a mental for a dot.io.

Rob:

Yeah, so I, other than StockAI.com, what’s the best domain name you still own?

Danny:

I think I’m using all my domain names. I don’t, I don’t think I have. I have one domain name. And I need to find a company for it cuz I have a fucking brilliant domain name idea I got. I can get a.com for three K. It’s such an amazing follow up for Headlime, I just have to find a company that I can put on top of it and then purchase it.

I’m not gonna say there cuz someone’s gonna poach it. Maybe, maybe, maybe have an update in one year when I purchase it.

Rob:

Yeah, someone will poach it.

Danny:

But names are so important cuz I heard so many people, cuz my company was called Head, Headlime instead of headline. It’s the same name. It was such a group burning.

Like people were telling me like, oh, this, I heard this podcast and people were talking, talking about Headlime, and every time in my head I heard headline, headline. So it was stuck in there like people kept hearing that word.

Rob:

So I love the branding. Dude.

Danny:

Branding is everything, man.

Rob:

Profile picture.ai uses artificial intelligence to transform your profile images into a magical collection of avatars you simply upload images of yourself and the service then produces over 120 stylized images covering fun genres like Anime, lofi, cartoon, rockstar, ancient warrior, and dozens more. Head over to Profile picture.ai to experience over a hundred new characters of yourself.

So, so what I really admire about you is your ability to brush off a rough launch. You know, I’ve seen you fail flat, and I’ve seen you rise high all in public what advice do you have for listeners nervous to build up their next launch in public?

Danny:

Man, you, you should just launch it instantly. So the thing is, yeah, it sucks.

Okay. Me and Peter got cloned a hundred times, but if we didn’t ship it in public like no one knew about the products, how are you gonna, if you’re, if you’re too scared that people clone your product, never gonna take off. And once people see it takes off, then people gonna clone it anyway.

Then the second part, is like yeah , lens I would have launched it anyway. Like, it’s not like they copied us from, from Twitter. So you might wanna stay a bit quiet about like the secret sauce. Like me and Peter are not, we’re not telling any AI tricks and that’s kind of things that’s like the secret sauce right now.

I shared a revenue in the beginning cuz it always ends up with a lot of engagements. So I love to do those posts a little bit, but now I’m more quiet about it. I won’t say anything about SEO tactics, stuff like that. But if you keep quiet, man, like no one is gonna buy a product. Don’t be, don’t be afraid. No one’s gonna copy a bad product ,

Rob:

so

Yeah, fair play. And I’m just thinking how many times you, everyone making online slightly pivots and you cannot pivot when you coding in isolation, it’s just like you fixated on one idea and then you are grafting to make this perfect one idea. But the chance that you actually gonna, that’s gonna be your like product at the end of the day is like zero

Danny:

Zero.

Rob:

So you might might as well just start pivoting.

Danny:

You, the only way you know what to build is by listening to customers. Like I launched Headlime, it was a headline generator, and people were telling me after I launched it like, you need to add emails, you need to add Facebook ads. And then suddenly someone was like, hey, you should generate it with G P T three.

Like, fuck nos. What I was gonna build, it was all my customers. Like building it like you need to, you, you cannot just build in secret for a year in case you don’t know. And then it’s too late

Rob:

Hey friends. Wow. It is so good to be back. I wanted to quickly share, there’s a brand new YO podcast website and a spicy new domain yo dot fm.

So over on the episode pages, you can browse all the links to the products and services mentioned in each interview. There’s also topic timestamps, there’s transcriptions. It’s honestly one of the best websites I’ve ever made. I’m super proud of it, but also open to feedback. I want it to be one of the best podcast websites out there, so please keep sending feedback.

Okay, let’s head back in. So we’ve got a pricing question here from Katie, from Australia. Hi Danny. I’ve just started programming, but would love to build up something to help generate extra income. Do you have any advice for helping me work out if SLO on monthly recurring revenue or easier one-off pricing is the best way to start?

Danny:

Well, if you go for long-term, then definitely go for MRR cuz those the money cups keeps coming in, keeps coming in, and you don’t have to keep doing marketing if your churn is low. But I’ve been noticing, I’ve been switching a lot of products to one time payments cuz it’s so much easier to get sales. I even think that if you, I’ve started, I’d started StockAI.com with a subscription and I got like 10 subs versus, now one-time payment, like people can try it faster. You will figure out what customers want and what they don’t want. So I think if you wanna validate an idea, make it a one-time payment. The same with Headlime one, time payment, and then I added subscriptions later. Yeah, like you want to figure out.

Rob:

But is that lifetime?

Danny:

Yeah, lifetime. And then I added subscription. Like you can, you want to get people into your startup, have them talk about it. And if it’s an expensive exp subscription, it’s not gonna work. So maybe start with a one time payment. Then once you edit the features that people really want, you pivoted your product to what people think you should go to, then add a subscription to it.

Rob:

Yeah. It’s basically like your, your core fans are now your actual investors. Yeah, and you know what? They were the ones that took the risk. Surely that’s okay for them to get rewarded for their entire lifetime. It’s only gonna be like a micro percent of your customers at the end of this road.

Danny:

If you sell your company and you have lifetime deals, they’re not gonna be that happy and they might stalk you for the rest of your life.

Rob:

So, so let’s go there quick. Let’s go there quick. Like what, what happened to your lifetime customers with Headlime?

Danny:

So, I nego, I, I negotiated with the, the guys who bought me that Headlime was gonna stay online. Lifetime deals should be there. They get the same plan. And Headlime has been online two years later still.

So these people, they paid $49, they got five years of a GPT3 copywriter for $49. So that’s $1 a month on average. So I think it’s an amazing deal. But people were like, your a sell out. This is always what happens. You can’t do this. What about your customers? And I was like, fuck, you got a really good product and I added so many features.

That’s a good deal, man. Look, I think the difference is they see it in this investment and they, they want to, there’s a black market of lifetime deals. This is, this is like, they really niche, lifetime deal people. They, they sell it. So I knew. People who bought the $49 plan, they sold it for thousands of dollars on Facebook marketplaces to other people.

Cuz they saved a monthly fee. Right?

Rob:

Wow.

Danny:

So they see it as investment. So I guess like some of them bought like 20, 30 subscriptions, lifetime deals to sell later on.

Rob:

That’s wild. This, this is like, this is.

Danny:

The fucking stock market man.

Rob:

It’s almost like Ticketmaster level.

Danny:

Yeah.

Rob:

Where people are just buying tickets and they’re just sitting on them and then reselling them at 20 x.

Danny:

So then I understand that you are kind of annoyed that the company gets acquired like eight months in. You have all these lifetime plans, but then on the other side this is fully against the terms of service right.

Rob:

So tell me quick about the market. Like did you, did you pick this up when you were in the co-working space in or like with the guys, how do you find out about this?

Danny:

I Had this guy follow me on Twitter and he posted in on Facebook and then it went and I had like 300 followers on Twitter. This was before I launched. This was my first real product that took off. He posted in one of these lifetime Facebook, cuz I just, I just read Influence by Robert Cialdini. I was like, I’m gonna use all the influence tactics on this thing.

I was like, lifetime deal scarcity whatever. And then I didn’t know there was a lifetime. I didn’t even know what AppSumo. So they shared it on there and like I got pulled into the Facebook groups and then people messaging me. So I like, I kind of learned like the ins and outs of it, which is mind blowing.

It’s like this whole, yeah. It’s whole industry free selling software.

Rob:

Would you say it’s a like a million dollar industry that people are, are working full-time on with their teams?

Danny:

Yeah. I bet there’s like, I think there’s people who have like hundreds and hundreds of lifetime deals.

Rob:

Wow.

Danny:

And some of them, they, like, they were known this, this just so funny

saper used to do lifetime deals. So there are people who still own lifetime deals to Saper, which sells them for like $20,000 to big companies.

Rob:

Oh my word.

Danny:

Because there’s big companies they use like massive amount of sap, right? Mm-hmm. Which is expensive. So they purchase the lifetime deals of these people buying those saper lifetime deals.

So this is what they hope. They hope to like have every other startup to, you only need one startup to earn back all the other investments.

Rob:

Let’s break into final intermission. I like to call true, false, maybe. So you just simply shoot back. No explanation needed at all. You got it.

Danny:

All right, let’s go.

Rob:

Technology creates more jobs than it replaces.

Danny:

Maybe I don’t have the sources.

Rob:

Netherlands had no chance in the World Cup.

Danny:

That’s true.

Rob:

When you were 13, you got paid one Euro 50 an hour to remove the flowers of tulips.

Danny:

True

Rob:

You’re tough, man. You’re tough.

Danny:

I, I was gaming too much. My parents were like, get out of this house and do some actual work.

And I’m 13 years old and they sent me into the fields man

Rob:

Levels and Postma CoLab is imminent.

Danny:

Maybe.

Rob:

You share the same birthday as Madonna.

Danny:

Do I?

Rob:

You do.

Danny:

True.

Rob:

Gathering inspiration is important to do your best work.

Danny:

True. That’s why I’m here.

Rob:

Dutch plugs are basically wooden crocks.

Danny:

True, it’s horrible though.

Rob:

If you get cloned in Chinese, you made it .

Danny:

Yeah, true. A hundred percent.

Rob:

Bintang is actually Heineken.

Danny:

True. Both horrible.

Rob:

ChatGPT will severely damage Google.

Danny:

False.

Rob:

And final question. AI scraping art without consent is a huge problem.

Danny:

True.

Rob:

Okay, we got a question here from Sasha Koss. What do you think about making money on AI models that were unethically trained without artist’s consent?

Danny:

Ooh. How to, how to go into this question?

Rob:

Take as much time as you want. It’s spicy.

Danny:

Yeah. The AI models are using this data and that’s a bad thing. I think it’s a bad thing if you use the style of the artists. If a designer would’ve made it, people would say, this is copied, this is a clone, this is too close to each other.

I don’t think my Provo pictures are using any AI or art, any art styles or selling any art styles in that sense. Then on the other side, the other like playing the devil’s advocate, you can think it in a such a way. How do you think a designer who makes websites, comes up with this design style is also being inspired by hundreds of go somewhere in the brain and it outputs his own style out.

When making a design, for example, I, you know this story, I, I learned how to design what, one pages 10, 13 years ago from your website, One Page Love that. That’s how my style, so I’m a hundred percent sure my design style comes from a hundred designers on One Page Love and I made my own style with it. So in that sense, the AI has been trained on all these artists and comes up with his own creativity.

But yeah, if you, if you’re gonna prompt like Greg, what is it? What this the most copied AI artist, Greg, this is one artist. If you just use that prompt and you make a painting and style and you say, “Hey, I made this”, then yeah, that’s horrible. And I’m think it’s really good that stable diffusion stability, AI is going the way where they make people opt out. They’re now working on their model to opt out everyone. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a tough topic, man.

Rob:

So, you know what I saw on MKBHD when he gave his, his little take on AI was, I, I was all like, fair game. Fair game. Exactly like what you said. And then I started seeing some results with artists’ signatures, you know, in the corners.

And that was like in the output. And that’s scary. So, like, to back up what you’re saying is, you’re saying if you offered a Van Gogh mm-hmm style profile picture. That’s not fair game anymore. Yeah. So I mean that’s, that’s basically it.

Danny:

Which I do actually, but I guess that’s been in the public de, like in the public domain for hundreds of years.

Rob:

It, it has been, hey.

Danny:

Dream Booth, you can train an AI based on someone’s style. There’s this person who’s been scraping one artist whole style Dream Boothed it. And that AI is now outputting that design. So basically there’s an AI outputting someone’s creativity, what they’ve been working on for tens and tens and tens of years.

Yeah, I would go mental cuz suddenly within a day, and I currently understand the outrage, their whole personality, their whole purpose in life got replaced by someone. Some script kitty. Trading on their work and saying it’s theirs. It might must be mind goggling.

Rob:

The blood, sweat, and, and tears in the in your art form, refining it, trying not to be like others.

Trying not to be like others. You finally lock in your own style. People like you. This is incredible. You’ve created something unique in the world. Then all of a sudden it’s like, boom. Yep. So bigger question. If you were up there on the board of Stable Diffusion and Dream Booth, what do you think we could put into place to help artists a bit?

Danny:

Think you should, and that’s what they’re doing right now is they’re trading their photos on public domain, actually approved images. The issue here is gonna be the ai is not gonna be good, cause public domain is probably way lower quality than anything else produced. So that’s gonna be an issue. So think they’re gonna be smart by having people opt out by themself.

Then again, you could make the remark that, okay, if someone didn’t opt out but they actually didn’t want it to happen, then they’re fucked now then. Yeah, I guess. But it’s the same with donor programs. Like do you want people to opt in to be a donor? No one’s gonna do it. Do you want people to opt out? Only the people who care about it will opt out of it.

So you will get the people out that don’t want to be inside of it. So I think they’re going a correct way. Cause all the artists that don’t want be traded upon, they are gonna opt out now. And I think the ai is actually also gonna think about that. So I think they’re doing, I think they’re doing a good way, like if they would only do opt in, then the whole progress of AI will be fucked cuz you would never create a good AI effort.

Rob:

I was just about to go this, I was thinking that this, this conversation we’re having has absolutely been said before with these very smart people at the top of these products. And they’re like, okay, cool. Let’s just give us a little alpha prototype of a public domain, ai. And then they sat there and they looked at the results and they’re like, well, no one will want this.

Danny:

A hundred percent.

Rob:

Your landing page for Profile Picture.ai is really impressive. Thank you. You know, it’s fun for me to watch from the outside, you know, all the years of your landing page hustle distilled into your own product, eh? So what recent changes made to your landing page really made a difference.

Danny:

Well, I’ve been using the same headers for like, what is it, five to 10 years.

It’s always the same picture on the right checklist, three checklist, title, subtitle, and a really good button. And there’s only one call to action. It’s basically like CRO conversion of optimization 1 0 1. This is like if you distill it. Adding social influence. But this is like by whole landing page it just goes through a checklist of influence by Robert Cialdini. If you’ve never read it, go read it. Mind changing. If you don’t know marketing, this is how you’re gonna understand it. It’s basically like you want to have the six checklists, you want to have social influence, you wanna show people have been using it.

You want authority, logos scars, the, all those kind of stuff. That’s basically the combination of the landing page.

Rob:

Brilliant. So is there anything that you sort of added recently that surprised you. I was like, wow, this increased conversions quite a bit. I know you’ve been switching up the photos quite a bit.

You’ve been getting pretty fancy with only listing the photos in the header that had the highest conversions. That was pretty smart.

Danny:

Every time I remove the scarcity banner, conversion rates drop, so it’s, it’s a really nice tactic. I used to do it with prices, but I never lie about it. That’s the thing.

So I always have to find a new kind of way to make a deal. So the lost scar is the bar, which I actually removed and it will never bring back, was buy one, get one. Now you get 40 bonus photos, for example, which I will never bring back anymore. So those really increase the conversion rates. Showing the examples really works really well.

Rob:

So scarcity, and just back on showing the examples. I mean, we know this from the landing page game. The one, the one big one I tell people is that there’s three ways to pitch a product. And you can either tell them, you can get other people to tell them, which is like your testimonials and so on. And the third one is you can show them..

Danny:

Oh, I, I, I love that list. That’s a good list.

Rob:

And that’s when you get your beautiful in page demos. And I’m just like in a, and obviously the best answer is all of them.

Danny:

If I, if I can add one extra hook on top of it, like, please, if you wanna show it, and then you, you want to sell the product. And don’t be sketchy.

Don’t have like all these fancy titles, fancy things. Now you want to just show a problem, present the solution and say why you are the right person to present that solution. People will buy from you.

Rob:

In my ebook. That’s my, I think tip 100 is the why. Because if you can pay like some solid reasoning why you are the person and the best person to deliver this.

That is just the slam dunk. And also because people, and people forget about this when it comes to especially subscription, it’s like, yeah, you know, I’m gonna subscribe. I’ve got all these subscriptions, but if this person is on this like proactive war in really solving this, they’re not gonna ditch us.

They’re gonna keep improving, keep improving, keep improving.

Danny:

Yeah. And as long as like that why keeps being stuck in the brain, like they, they have a way to convince themself to know, this is why I use that product. This is why last jump. This is why I love really hyper-focused products. Because you can really put down the why.

Cuz if you, if your product is gonna go bigger, like intercom or whatever, like the, the, the why is not there anymore. The why is, oh, to communicate with your customers, blah, blah, blah. But like, if you have like a really direct why, like, okay, I create Provo pictures with ai, with upload your photos. Like it’s so niche.

You can completely explain what it is in a second.

Rob:

The why actually creates this unlimited motivation in you, which is also overlooked. Because if you just wanna solve a problem on something you’re not that passionate about and you start seeing competitors and all of a sudden, you know, with One Page Love . I have been doing it for, you know, 13 years and I still, I still get so excited when I see like this simple side with a beautiful demo in it.

I’m like, that is so clever. That is unlimited inspiration and motivation for me. It’s a battery just got topped up.

Danny:

Oh, you made the product for yourself, right?

Rob:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Danny:

Like you made a product for yourself. You didn’t make a product for someone else, like it’s for you. And then suddenly all these thousands of other people like, like including me.

Liked what you were liking for yourself and that’s the best way to get started. Like, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get bored of it.

Rob:

I see your wife I think I wanna say her name,Witria..

Danny:

Yep. Perfect.

Rob:

I see your wife has been getting involved in the Asian marketing side, you know, is there some influencer action on the, on the, on the cards?

This is new to us.

Danny:

Yeah, she’s killing it. This is quite funny cuz. She’s never done any sass things, any software, any online product. She was the manager of a coworker space, so she’s she, she knows how to handle a lot of things, so she was just making Provo pictures for like these really big, are like actresses here in Indonesia and they were started following her and she lays like a few hundred followers on Instagram.

Mm-hmm. . They were like reposting it’s 2 million followers. This other art actor, 3 million followers, you got like a shit ton of visitors over from Indonesia. The issue is due, they don’t have credit cards here, so we got like massive amount of visitors, but they don’t have a way to pay. Stripe doesn’t offer any payment systems.

Wow. So we got lucky with a few of them that have Paypal so, yeah, that’s the hard thing about the Asian markets.

Rob:

How are people paying, like QR codes and vending machines and stuff or like?

Danny:

Yeah, go, GoPay. It’s basically all these super apps, like WeChat, like the local WeChat grab Uber QR codes. Yeah. That’s, that’s how they pay.

Yeah.

Rob:

Wow.

Danny:

I, I buy my electricity tokens via this super app and then I go to a machine in the wall and I type like a 20 digit code and that’s how I’m gonna get my electricity. Love it.

Rob:

Dude, that’s exactly how I buy electricity in Africa.

Danny:

Really? Its such a foreign concept for me. She was like, oh yeah, you just top up your the app where you buy food.

I was like, wait, what? Yeah, you get a coat, you go outside. Do you see the fit? I was like, okay.

Rob:

A more macro question here. You know, when it comes to indie making, do you feel there’s money on the table for indie makers teaming up with other makers in different countries? So it’s like, hey, hey, there’s a whole market in India.

No one is doing profile pictures in India. What indie makers are up there to quickly help me navigate quickly?

Danny:

I’m biased. I don’t like partnerships. Cause 90% of the time it’s just a big mouth, big words, and they don’t deliver anything. So I’d rather reframe it to a way I, I should work with. Probably see how you could team up with someone who, yeah, translations would probably work way better.

I know that like Lensa grew really fast by hiring 30, 40 influencers in Indonesia, and then everyone was posting it on the Instagram, suddenly like out of nowhere. We were doing it first and then suddenly all these influencers started posting Lensa. So that’s a great way to enter the market. Yeah, not sure if you have to work with another indie maker, but I think.

I mean, Indonesia has, what is it, 500 million people? I think there’s barely, like most of them don’t speak English. Like if you could make an Indo version of it and you have Indo payments, which is fucking hard to get, dude, then yeah, there’s a, there’s a golden opportunity and I think this is why Lensa probably also won, cuz Apple has the distribution of codes you can buy in the supermarket, top up your iPhone and you can purchase it.

So you don’t have to worry about your whole credit card system cuz Apple already figured it out for you. So I think that’s probably how they took the world over too.

Rob:

So speaking of the, you know, just landing pages and so on, what are, what are the biggest mistakes you’re seeing other indie creators make with their landing pages?

Danny:

Copy, like, absolutely co copywriting. Like these people, they have these amazing, amazing products, honestly, but then they write it. So this is the issue I think. And we, we got good in it cause we learned how to do it. It’s really hard to market your own product cuz you made it, you know how to explain it, but you don’t know how to market it.

And you want to write this like, so this is why you should use an AI copywriter that was trained to explain it. You can just type in, Hey, my product does X, Y, and Z in this il, which is outputs. How to communicate with users. Put it on your landing page page. You want to have your copy. Good, like you don’t even need a design.

Just make a blank page. Have a photo in the header. Title, a subtitle and a call to action. That’s enough. Wow. And I think this is like the basic people are gonna, they buy the template, they make it all look fancy, but then the copywriting is wrong. People don’t understand the product. And then, yeah, you like, you lose the customers.

They’re only gonna stay if they, if they don’t understand the products in, in 500 milliseconds, you’re gone.

Rob:

Such a like lost for anything smart to say, other than the saying you can’t polish a turd,

comes to mind. Really, dude, if like, you can’t read like what, what the product does, you can’t understand it. It’s done, dude. I don’t care how shiny it is.

Danny:

Yep.

Rob:

So, so we’ve got a questionnaire from Sam Norris Rogers. He asks, what AI services are you using? And what is the architecture behind the recent products that you are shipping? All right, tech, tech doesn’t matter at all, guys. Build whatever you want. But it’s NextJS MongoDB for the backends host on Heroku.

Danny:

I tried to host all my AI stuff myself. It’s hell, it’s absolutely horrible. It’s fine you, you, I got set up on my own server, working connected and everything. But then suddenly you think, oh, but I need to scale it. Cuz AI works only single threads, so it only runs once. You cannot just like put a few processes like that.

So just use API providers Replicate.com. They have an amazing amount of AI stuff. Now. Just request an AI that you saw in GitHub and they were upload it for you. Hugging Faces is really, really cool. I don’t understand hugging faces there. Well, though, so I think they’re more a bit on the developer side. We’ve been using Astria.ai for the dream move one, so that’s a good one.

The only issue is, is they set the prices so they can just increase and decrease it. If they’re out, then you’re out. Yeah. You’re at the mercy of them. So that’s an issue. But without them, I wouldn’t have been able to earn the money I’ve earned with Pro Picture of the guy, like, don’t, don’t go fancy. Once the once, once you validated, then you can start building your own stuff.

But just use infrastructure that’s there.

Rob:

So use infrastructure it, it creates speed, and then speed is your validation and your actual low investment.

Danny:

Okay? So you pay, you pay five times more for the aid, for the api, but you save two, three weeks of your time while someone else could have launched. Like that time is already worth all the money.

Like you don’t want to, you don’t want to go cheap on that.

Rob:

Second, last question. You recently hired your wife, to the team. Okay. So, you know, I am also building online. I am also recently married.

Danny:

Congratulations.

Rob:

Thank you. Thank you. But I, you know, I’ve had this thought many times. It would be great for us to, you know, have the, our own thing, but there’s many pros and cons to hiring your wife, as I have read.

Danny:

Mm-hmm.

Rob:

And I’ve, I’ve spoken to other people , so did you get a gut feel on this? You know, a certain type of person you can work with as well? Or did you get some advice?

Danny:

I mean, there’s, there’s multiple reasons why I thought it was a good plan for us. I live remotely, like I can, I can live anywhere. I like to travel.

She likes to travel, but she had a physical job, so good luck traveling. If you have a physical job for six days a week, it just doesn’t happen, which really annoyed me when I sold my company and she still had a job and she didn’t want to, and she didn’t want to work for me or whatever. So now finally she wanted to she has the opposite personality. Amazing. I’m a dreamer and she’s a realist. So I, I just always forget to do things, man. It, it always just flood us out of my head and she gets like angry at me. She’s like, you need to do this, that, that, and da that today. I’m like, . So that’s a good thing. But yeah, you’re gonna be 24/7 together.

That needs to be something you like. But we split up sometimes she goes to the cafe. I go to the cafe always at home together. It’s been good. Three weeks. It’s really fun.

Rob:

I like what you said about, you know, the opposite skills sort of, because that means if you’re all good at the same thing, then it’s probably overlap because she lets you do your department that you’re really good at.

Yep. And she’s not going, Hey, but I wouldn’t actually kind of do that head any, like, that’s actually, that’s not a good idea, mate. And you’re like, hey man, I’m, I’ve got flow here. And then do you, do you guys shut off in the evenings? Do you say there’s no work talk past X hour?

Danny:

Yeah, she, the first week she woke me up at six with customer related questions, cuz she was waking up at five every day.

I was like, we’re gonna set some ground rules, ma’am. 7:30 before 7:30 you don’t open life chat. After five. I don’t want any life chat questions. I don’t want to hear the ping of crisp in my ear. It gives me ptsd. I don’t want to hear it. Oh man. So you gotta, like, the first few weeks is obviously a little bit rough.

Like you said, you gotta set the boundaries, but now yeah, it’s good.

Rob:

Brilliant. Great to hear it. So, final question. Augmented reality: you had a viral moment with Pokemon Go.

Danny:

Mm-hmm.

Rob:

And we were all thinking, oh wow, the world around us is gonna change very quickly. But it didn’t really. Same thing is happening with, you know, ai.

Back then it was like, whoa, ai. And then it was like, actually no ai. But all of a sudden AI is ramping up very, very, very quickly. And now we have ChatGPT

Danny:

mm-hmm.

Rob:

And it’s dropping jaws. Okay. Where is this all going, in your opinion? And where, where do you think we’re gonna be In about 10 years. So 2033 life as an indie developer.

Danny:

So let’s say the world is still in one piece, Taiwan hasn’t been lost to China, whatever, we can still produce chips. Everything is all right. I think in 10 years everyone will have their personal AGI which you can just ask questions. It will form it back to you, cuz it, it, GPU’s got so cheap that you can run it in your phone.

Stuff like that. I think we’re gonna have a lot of personalized content. Like why should you and me watch the same YouTube video, like millions of others? If you, if videos could be one-on-one personalized towards you, I think that’s gonna be possible. Cuz already you can already make ar. Why would you have a podcast that hundreds like towns of people listen to if this podcast could have been narrated specifically for you, for your interests, based on your Rob’s voice and everything that’s traded on.

Like maybe you want to hear about ai, but someone else wants to hear about Web three, and so like, did this thing. So I think it’s more personalized with ai. I don’t know about VR dude. I don’t think people like, I cannot use VR. I get sick. It feels horrible for me. Like it sucks cuz I love to do it, but I, I cannot be, I cannot use it.

So I think AI will be cooler. Have a screen. Suddenly you put your glasses on. There’s a screen here, there’s a screen there, screen there. Like why would you, buy physical products, if you can see it overlapped over you and you’re still present in this world instead of present in the other world.

Rob:

Incredible.

Danny:

Oh no, it’s probably, yeah, it’s gonna go already play one way.

Rob:

Like why now are we not watching MKBHD videos? With a Chinese audio? Like why is he not speaking in Chinese already? Yeah, it’s quite crazy, right? Like, is the tech not there yet. Like surely, I should be in China and press play. And then he’s speaking to me in Chinese.

Danny:

Oh. That’s what Mr. Beast does, right? I don’t know if you know that, but Mr. Beast has voice. vocalists, voice, voice people, voice actors.

Rob:

Does he?

Danny:

For every country that he popular in, he has Spider-Man in Brazil. I might have botched the country. He. Hired the voice of Spider-Man to do him in Brazil for like his Brazilian Portuguese content.

So he has a whole team. I think he’s spinning it off now. This guy’s brilliant. He has all his videos in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, whatever. But that’s all done.

Rob:

Yeah. Manually.

Danny:

Manually. Yeah. I probably, in, probably in five years, you can automate this.

Rob:

There is almost a service there, dude, we, there’s way too many ideas going through our heads, but uh, that is a service like MKBHD, what is he gonna pay per month to translate all his videos in different, like his market share would increase.

Danny:

Yep.

Rob:

It’s, it’s worth value. There’s way more advertisers on that. There’s is, you could probably charge him thousands.

Danny:

The English world doesn’t understand that a minority of the world speaks English.

Rob:

An idea you had was, you know, give us the, the curated overview of the top pack of news stories and the top product hunts.

I’m just opening my eyes in the morning and like, just making a coffee and, and just read it to me. So, yeah, man, like not everyone wants to read.

Danny:

I still, I still wanna build that product. I couldn’t do it cuz I didn’t left the tag two years ago. I might be able to do it now if I have some time. Dude, the moment you, you don’t sleep anymore, if, if you’re interested in AI and you like building companies.

Rob:

Is there an offline exit for you or you’re just gonna let online curiosity guide you forever?

Danny:

We’ve been doing some overline things, doing some construction of houses. But it’s too slow, dude. It’s like you’re waiting and you’re waiting and like I think out of this podcast summarized Denny has probably has undiagnosed ADD I cannot sit still, I cannot wait. I want to get things done. Yeah. And then having to wait for the government to accept my land for five years five months, like. Man, like I cannot.

Rob:

Thanks so much for being on the podcast, man. Wherever you, where can people follow your journey online?

Danny:

Thank you, sir, very much for having me after years of talking about it. Good to be back and good to be back on your.

Rob:

Yeah, it’s been a minute. We’re back strong.

Danny:

Follow me on Twitter if it still exist after today.

On, yeah, Twitter, @dannypostmaa with a double A. And that’s it. That’s where I build in public. I share my journey. I share what I’m building, revenue tips, tricks and everything.

Rob:

So here is a bang in Indie outro titled “The Beach” by Sonic Spark. Hoping to share a few waves with you one day, Danny.

Danny:

I would probably direct you down on the surfboard cuz I cannot surf

Rob:

It’s too slow to learn?

Danny:

Yep, yep, yep. Paddling for 30 minutes and then falling down. It’s too slow for me, man. There’s no reward.

Danny Postma

Episode Sponsor: Lemon Squeezy 🍋

Conversation Topics:

Episode Links:

Bonus Episode Content:

Transcription: