For today´s episode, Mike is joined by Mike Todasco a visiting fellow at San Diego State University and former director of Innovation at PayPal. Mike holds over 100 patents and has a passion for leveraging AI to get things done fast. If you are a solopreneur who wants to scale quickly without building a team, this episode is very much for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI genuinely can super charge your business.
• Experiment to get the most out of AI. When it comes to mastering tech growth experimentation is key.
• According to McKenzie, businesses can use AI to eliminate 60 to 70% of their tasks.
• Use an AI bracelet to record what you do each day.
• Eliminate the tasks that are no longer necessary and aim to automate the rest.
• Use tools like make.com to start automating app-based tasks. It may take time to get each task automation to work, so you need to be persistent.
• You can outline a task to Zapier, and it will create a workflow of automation for you to tweak.
• Find a space or activity that lets you switch off fully and really think e.g. running or driving. That´s when the ideas flow.
• Pick an AI tool and go with it, learn it throughly. Once you´ve done that you will be able to master other AI tools far faster.
• Automate tasks that are expensive to outsource. Mike shares some surprising use cases.
• Empower the people who work for you with AI tools.
• Explore Notebook LLM for content creation. It relies solely on the sources you give it.
• Use reinforcement learning to get the most out of AI. The more feedback you give it the better.
• ChatGPT can now remember your previous chats, which means it can now learn about you, your preferences, what you are working, the language you like to use and more.
• Use AI in your day-to-day life e.g. to create your training routines

BEST MOMENTS

00.57 "The majority of solopreneurs use AI without a system, no workflow, no structure, no AI leverage."

5.23 "Embrace your inner child, you need to experiment, you need to try stuff, you need to fail. That´s how you work with these AI tools."

13.08 "If you are not occasionally adding steps back into your processes that means you are not removing enough."

26.24 “The thing that kills ideation is having a phone. You just think oh god I´m so bored, I need to go on TikTok.”

38.26 “Just pick one AI tool and go with it. All of them are so darn good.”

52.16 “According to MIT Sloan, AI systems perform much better when they are treated as collaboration partners.”

1.02.16 “Find the tasks which are low hanging fruits, quick wins, which should not be done by hand.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.linkedin.com/in/todasco

https://www.bee.computer – AI bracelet

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Today, Mike is joined by Quentin de Quelen the CEO and cofounder of Meilisearch, one of the fastest growing open-source search engines, which can easily be integrated into websites and applications. Quentin helps companies create fast, customisable, typo-proof search experiences.

Today, for research, 46% of Gen Z prefer Instagram and TikTok. YouTube is now the go-to for tutorials and reviews, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, Voice Assistant, etc. are also popular. In an environment like that, you have to ask yourself, "How are people going to find me and find what they need from me?" This episode has the answers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• How people search and the evolution of the tools they use changes monthly.
• Most of the time, you can still impact how you appear in the various search interfaces.
• Consumers are increasingly in discovery mode; they are no longer simply looking for one specific thing. E.g. They are less likely to type in a specific trainer; they want to know what is available and choose from there.
• Meilisearch is very good at ascertaining the intent of the search and delivering results based on that.
• The structure of our website data will change to facilitate LLMs, Quentin explains why MCPs are likely to play a role.
• Having very intentional pages on your website helps to better control what content ChatGPT etc uses to answer users’ questions.
• There is very little difference between how you target voice searches and LLM searches, but the response needs to differ.
• To glean invaluable information about your customers, analyse all of your user queries and their search intent. Meilisearch is particularly good for this.
• Use your query results to create better adaptive content.
• Keep your data clean to make it easier to search.
• To build user trust, be transparent and provide sources.
• Schema still helps to organize data.
• Consider using LLM.txt.
• In the LLM age, c**p site content is even more damaging.
• Use as many formats as possible for your content, including video.

BEST MOMENTS

3:42 "Search, today, is moving quite fast…now it´s changing every month."

6:48 "Whatever the medium, there is always transcription to a final search that will be made."

14:07 "You don´t want to let ChatGPT call your website, find whatever results and showcase it all to users."

21:44 "One intent, one page…works best."

28.33 “Know when not to answer.”

44.11 “People can choose whatever model they prefer …it’s easier to be trusted.”

50.13 “Think about what your user expects and manage your data to look like what your user expects.”

57.01 “Split your pages into relevant segments.”

1.07.25 “Write content that is mindful, content people want to read.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.meilisearch.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcus Fontoura, Azure Core CTO, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, holder of 50 patents and the author of A Platform Mindset. Marcus is certainly a man who knows how to scale tech without breaking it.

If your startup is taking off so fast that you can’t keep up or are drowning in bugs and relying on hot fixes and workarounds to hold things together, this episode is for you. It teaches you how to stop scaling your technical debt and redirect your energy and resources into scaling success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Marcus helped to shape some of the planet´s fastest scaling systems, including Google and Yahoo.
• Disconnected systems slow you down more than missing features. Decide on the technology, platforms, and tools early and get everyone to use them.
• When you tell developers which tools they will use from day 1 it frees up bandwidth for them to create faster and avoids resentment when you have no choice but to standardise the platforms used.
• Recognise when it is time to move from the validation stage to the professionalisation stage.
• Invest in infrastructure and tools that are easy to scale as demand rises.
• Avoid over engineering.
• Make sure all of your systems integrate to avoid silos and repeating work. Marcus explains how.
• Most startups (75%) fail because they scale too fast.
• On average, a day per week per developer is wasted fixing poorly planned and implemented code etc.
• Creating a high performing team culture is the key to fast and efficient growth.
• People don´t change easily that is why you need to cultivate sound cultural values, communication, trust, collaboration, willingness to take feedback etc.
• Protect your company values even when hyper scaling.
• Don’t hire brilliant jerks, they pull everyone down.
• Cultural skills are hard to teach, but most tech skills can be taught in months.
• The CEO needs to be a good role model.
• Build trust and collaboration between teams.

BEST MOMENTS

1:09 "The fix? It starts with the platform mindset."

4:30 "Tech growth equals preparing for scaling."

16.33 "Developers waste 23% of their time…reworking bad past solutions."

30.00 "Recognise what you don´t know and pull in people who can actually help you."

43.12 "Understand the phase you are in… and scale accordingly."

50.11 "Any system you build should have inbound and outbound APIs."

54.25 "The culture enables a lot of efficiency when teams trust each other."

1.08.11 "When you are ready for hyper growth…hire the best talent you can get."

1.16.30 “Have a growth mindset to build a culture to leverage platforms for impact.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusfontoura

Multipliers Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Liz-Wiseman/author/B00369WNUW

Ideal Team Member - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Patrick-Lencioni/author/B001ILFMB2

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.