Build In Public University
By Leo Guinan
Build In Public UniversityOct 03, 2022
Data Mining, Minecraft, and the Building Blocks of the Internet
I made a joke about heading off to a long day of work in the data mines, and that led me to launch a course.
Turns out, you can use Minecraft as a great vehicle for explaining how the internet works, so I'm going to do that. Enjoy my explanation of the thought process behind everything that's going into the course development.
Fun With AI - The Importance of Randomness in Inspiration
How often do you just have some fun? I decided to do that last week, and I had a great time. And I was hit by a wave of inspiration in the process.
Listen to this episode if you want to hear about some playing around I did with AI prompts, the results, or why social media can have a negative effect on us.
Understanding the Hype Around AI
There's a lot of hype right now around AI. In this episode, I talk about where the hype is wrong and what you can expect from AI. There's a lot to love about AI, but there are also a lot of caveats. Listen to this episode if you want to have a better understanding of the current and future states of AI.
Don't be afraid to wander
Conventional wisdom tells you that you just need to focus. All of your problems are due to your lack of focus.
I disagree.
There was a time when that was more true, but given the increasing rate of change in the world, focus can actually doom you in the longer term.
Take the time to think through your ideas and explore possible different paths. You might find yourself being quite happy you did!
The First Thing You Should Do: Increase Your Luck Surface Area
What are you doing that gives you the opportunity to be lucky?
How much do you think about that?
Maybe you sit at home and just complain about how lucky everyone else is.
In order to get lucky, you have to put yourself in a position to be lucky. In this episode, I talk about what you can do, why it works, and how to think about it.
The Importance of Inertia
Something I've discovered about myself: inertia is incredibly important. In this episode, I talk about my approach to getting stuff done and riding the inertia wave to overcome the challenges I face with ADHD.
Competition - Myths vs Realities
What does the word competition mean to you? I've wondered that myself and will probably continue to battle with it, but in this episode I dig into competition from a few different angles and share what competition means to me.
Hacks Vs Real Knowledge
In many cases, we use hacks to speed up our outcomes. But that tends to leave us with outcomes that aren't sustainable or repeatable.
In this episode, I chat about some thoughts I've been having around what it takes to build sustainable knowledge instead of relying on hacks to get by.
The Importance of Writing and the Factory Mindset
Writing really helps me identify trends in my behavior and analyze my own patterns of behavior. In doing so, I realized I had been falling back into what I'm calling the "Launch Mindset", where I focus on a single point in time as the most important thing.
To overcome this, I'm focusing on developing the "factory mindset" instead, where it's about the production and not the event. An ongoing process that is constantly improved vs that single point in time.
To read the newsletter I was writing when I realized this fact, check out this issue of the SaaS Factory:
Building in Public and Mental Health
Building in public and mental health can go hand in hand, for better or worse. But overall, I've found that it has led to stronger relationships, more support, and more friendships than trying to do things on my own.
Entrepreneurship is hard. Don't forget that and surround yourself with people who support you.
If you want the hear the first podcast interview I did about dealing with ADHD/Autism, you can check out my episode of Lobow's Spark.
What do you talk about when you don't know what to talk about?
Let's chat about what to say when you don't have the words. When you're building in public, it's easy to get discouraged, it's easy to feel like nothing is moving the needle, and it's easy to say nothing.
But I encourage you to dig deeper, not for your audience, but for you.
Look at why you're doing what you're doing and do it for the future you.
SaaS Development - Admin First
In this episode, I'm sharing my approach to building out Social Media Gardens, because it's a different approach than I've taken to products in the past. I'm building out the admin functionality before the user functionality. This allows me to take a more white-glove style approach to onboarding users. And since I'm working on getting users at a higher price point, I think this will serve me well going forward. It also allows me to have a bit more flexibility around how I end up implementing things.
The Newsletter - The SaaS Factory
How do I approach a newsletter?
Why would I name it The SaaS Factory?
What's a factory got to do with software?
I answer these questions and more.
To checkout the newsletter, you can go to https://saasfactory.substack.com
Who Is Build In Public University For?
Build In Public University is where I'm going to share what I've learned about being a creator, an entrepreneur, an engineer, and every other role I've played throughout my life.
In this episode, I share my idea for a creator business model that I can use to fund the rest of my entrepreneurial endeavors.
Check out the blog at https://blog.buildinpublicuniversity.com