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.

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Graham Riley, a LinkedIn strategist, speaker, and founder of LinkedIn Enterprises. For 20+ years, Graham has been helping B2B companies generate millions in revenue using LinkedIn. His strategies don´t just get you likes; they drive deals.

He and Mike discuss how you need to respond to drastic algorithm changes, why your execs need to engage on LinkedIn, quickly create content, take advantage of LinkedIn visitor data that many people are not even aware of, and much more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The majority of LinkedIn advice is out of date.
• LinkedIn is not just another social media platform or a resume repository. It is a sales generator.
• Engagement is the key to leveraging LinkedIn. Respond to your comments and do it properly.
• Comments that elevate what was said and add value are the most effective. 75% of visitors to Graham´s profile visit after reading his comments.
• Your execs' silence is hurting your brand visibility.
• Execs want to hear from thought leaders, from other execs. LinkedIn enables your execs to connect, build awareness, trust and belief.
• With LinkedIn, you have to take a strategic approach.
• Use business impact language.
• Say the right things to the right audience at the right time to generate curiosity in your ability to solve the problem.
• Create a great LinkedIn profile by consistently doing a series of little things right.
• Marketing, sales and product delivery are all a part of acquiring a customer and turning them into a repeat customer.
• Recently, the algorithm changed. If your posts have no interaction, they will not be seen. Engaging with comments the right way is essential.
• Train AI train well, use the right AI tools and do it well.
• Take your business whitepaper, distil it and turn it into snackable content.
• Keep repeating your messages. If you don´t, people forget.

BEST MOMENTS

1:47 "Graham is the only guest who has managed to get 400 people tuned in for this LinkedIn event, normally it is about 200 people."

5:30 “People trust people…content from individuals especially executives builds more trust."

10:53 "The power comes when all of those components are working in harmony with each other, just like in a car."

32.44 “LinkedIn is telling you that you should care about how much your comment is getting seen.”

46.00 “How you behave and communicate with me is shaping my perception of how much attention I should pay.”

1.03.04 “Somebody with a free profile can generate opportunities, but it’s much harder.”

1.06.12 “Use your LinkedIn profile to mimic the professional behaviours that you would have at a trade show or conference.”

1.11.14 “ Around 75% of the people who visit my profile have come from the comments that I've made.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

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

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.

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Chris Silvestri, the founder of Conversion Alchemy. Chris helps B2B SaaS companies break through the noise, reach more would-be customers and show them why they are the obvious choice. Chris’s carefully honed approach uses the alchemy of copy, UX, and decision-making psychology to turn browsers and visitors into loyal, paying customers.

He digs deep into customer research, pulls out real insights, who your real buyer is, what their buying decision making process is and determine what language will resonate with them, so that your message lands and converts.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Mastery is about going deeper than your competition.
• Invest in customer research. You can't write copy that converts without it.
• Build a repeatable research process.
• There are layers to research.
• The surface layer of research is reviews and competitors’ products. The deeper layers include the customer experience while using a product like yours and why customers behave as they do.
• Focus on the individual decisions customers make during their buying journey and why they make them.
• Uncover your unique narrative by asking customers what they think existing providers are doing wrong.
• Use reviews to understand the language your customers use.
• Your copy needs to resonate with – daily users, the purchasing decision maker and the check signer.
• Use AI combined with human data to simulate personas. Chris explains how and which tools to use.
• According to HubSpot, 72% of SaaS websites fail to clearly explain what they offer.
• Get your value proposition right.
• Blend features with benefits.
• Test and tweak your copy.
• To truly connect with people, use their language, their pain points and their motivations.

Be clear on what you do, how you do it and who you do it for.

BEST MOMENTS

1.14 "People underestimate the power of good copy when it comes to conversions."

3:25 "Invest more in research."

6:36 "The deep-seated layer tells you why customers make the decisions they make and how they make them."

15:24 "To uncover your customer´s pain points….reviews are a good starting point."

31:00 "You can make sure that everything it gives is accurate and that it doesn´t hallucinate."

40:40 "You can simulate personas with AI, but not real customer behaviour, at least not yet."

47:73 “Imagine that your copy needs to continue the phrase "I want to … that's your valuable position."

59:00 "The right message basically has the right positioning with the right language for the right audience."

1.05.36 “The best copy is copy that doesn´t look like copy.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://conversionalchemy.net

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

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Demand-Side-Sales-101-Customers-Progress/dp/1544509987

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.

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Lukas Gentele, CEO and co-founder of Loft Labs, to discuss how to ensure that your open-source project doesn’t end up being one of the 80% that fail. Lukas has successfully launched multiple open-source projects and turned them into profitable businesses. Through this episode, he provides the bones of a framework you can use to do the same.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Open source needs to solve real problems, ones that people are willing to pay to have solved.
• Your open-source product needs to solve problems, but not to the point where nothing is left to build a commercial product that will still attract buyers.You are building 2 tools. Avoid interdepartmental rivalry - don´t silo the development of the two products.
• The build it and they will come mentality doesn´t work.
• Write and continuously publish content to increase the chances of your product taking off.
• Create communities of your own. Use them to better understand who your customers are and what their pain points are now and in the future.
• Fully engage with users to turn them into contributors. Value ideas and usage insights just as much as coding.
• Don’t expect your community to build a lot of code. They will, but it will be limited.
• Recognise those that contribute.
• Years on, continue to engage with your users, release enhancements and new content to maintain momentum.
• Continuously update your readme, include a demo video, don´t skimp on the support docs. Without these using your tool becomes too difficult and your reputation suffers.
• Offer a free trial for paid features.
• Make the transition from open source to your paid product a no brainer and easy.

BEST MOMENTS

00.30 "80% of open-source projects ultimately flop."

02:52 "Focus on the right problem in the right market."

07.47 “When you ship new features and talk about them, you create more and more opportunities.”

22.04 “ There needs to be a balance between what's open source and what's commercial.”

25.32 "That's the beautiful effect of open source; people actually want to work with the folks that built it."

30.12 "You are effectively building two different tools. One is open source, one is enterprise. ."

34.27 "If we had just launched a commercial offering, I don't think we would have a company today."

35.29 “There's a balance between what you open source and what you don’t. You don't want to tip the scale either way."

39.23 "Over 90% of users are consumers, not contributors."

45.29 "These people feel even more engaged with the product. They feel part of this community. They feel part of the project."

58.00 “Your success will equal other people's successes.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.vcluster.com

https://github.com/loft-sh/vcluster

https://slack.vcluster.com

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

https://x.com/lukasgentele

https://www.loft.sh

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.

Today, Mike is joined by Sam Piliero, founder of The Moonlighters, a marketing agency helping brands scale profitably. Sam and his team break down why most brands struggle to scale their ads, and how small fixes in strategy can make the difference between them running ads that are burning cash and ads that enable firms to scale profitably.

Sam explains how to use AI for marketing, work out what strategy is right for your company and which ad platforms are providing the best exposure and ROI, right now.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Small changes in strategy can take you from burning cash running ineffective ads to spending a lot less while seeing sales soar.
• AI combined with manual oversight is now an effective way to craft, monitor and tweak ads.
• The new Meta UI is going to be transformative.
• The number of campaigns you should be running changes as you evolve.
• Nurture your existing customers but dedicate most of your budget to customer acquisition.
• Setting up your pixels and using that data is vital.
• At the start, be everywhere. Gather the data, then focus on the platforms that work best.
• Leverage all of the channels in the G Suite (Google).
• Right now, there are lots of opportunities on X for small businesses.
• Include as many formats as possible in each ad campaign to increase your placement levels.
• People resonate with stories.
• Analysing your ROI is essential. Sam explains exactly how to do it.
• Drill down into what times of the day/week convert best for you.

BEST MOMENTS

3:19 "he next six months, we're going to see an acceleration of the use of some of the AI tools."

5:46 "You have to really focus on what's actually functioning the best today, and then focus on six months, nine months, then a year from now."

7:22 "Allow the market to iron things out, be a little bit later in adopting these new things."

9:55 "Companies that scale successfully evolve their customer acquisition model."

12:38 "Early days, it's okay to have even just one or two campaigns."

17.20 “Facebook and Google are the best converting platforms, period, right now.“

21.01 “Almost every time the geo-located campaigns are outperforming the E-com side because we are targeting a specific cohort of people.“

25.35 “Whenever big advertisers remove themselves from an ad platform, the cost of advertising decreases drastically.”

26.43 “If you spend the same amount across the board, e.g. $1,000 you would typically be seeing Facebook and Google outperform.”

32.05 “The more value you put in a piece of content, the more views it gets.”

33.16 “Virality is not only unique, it is actually earned.”

42.00 “Don't overreact to slight adjustments in the ad account.”

51.29 “Always focus on minimizing wasted ad spend and reallocating that ad spend to the best possible place.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://themoonlighters.com/techgrowth

https://www.youtube.com/@SamPiliero

Social - @SamPiliero

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.

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcelo Calbucci, the author of PRFAQ Lab. He has been successfully growing startups for 18+ years and is a former Amazon exec. His book PRFAQ Lab breaks down the framework Amazon uses to determine whether an idea is viable and how to develop it. This framework has helped to ensure that in a world where 92% of start-ups fail, most of Amazon´s succeed. As do other start-ups that use the framework.

If you want to learn how to de-risk your startup and build with confidence before you write a single line of code, listen in and turn your ideas into validated and fundable billion-dollar products, services and businesses.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 92% of startups fail.
• Amazon start-ups use a simple framework called PRFAQ to validate their ideas, align their team and get investors. An approach that has been highly successful, with the majority of their start-ups succeeding.
• PRFAQ stands for Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions.
• Using the 7 step Press Release format enables you to identify the problem, who is experiencing the issue, your solution, how it works and how people can get your product.
• Writing a press release as if you have already launched the product opens your mind and improves understanding.
• Manually write your PR. Writing has been scientifically proven to help you think, it activates different sides of the brain.
• The FAQs you need to include are those that help you to define vision and strategy.
• Validate your idea before you start coding. If the market does not exist, don´t build it.
• Understand the job the customer is trying to complete and what steps they are currently following to get it done. Don´t guess.
• Understanding where to find your customers is a vital part of your research.
• PRFAQ also works well for services and businesses. It is a great way to align a team and share the vision in an undiluted form.
• PRFAQ is good for pitching.

BEST MOMENTS

3:40 "You have to wear your archaeologist or anthropologist hat and really observe how people work through the problem that you're trying to solve."

7:13 "The best way to address that problem is to eliminate the problem."

12:43 "According to Harvard Business Review, startups that validate … market need for their solution are 2.5 times more likely to succeed."

30.53 “It's not really a customer discovery framework. PRFAQ is a framework that helps you discover what you don't know and helps you to capture and think critically about that.”

47.34 “So, your slides don't have the typical gaps that most pitch decks have.”

48.53 “According to Forbes, startups with well-structured pitch documents are 60% more likely to secure funding.”

52.31 “Every product you know that Amazon has launched over the last 20 years was backed by a PRFAQ.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.theprfaq.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.