One Developer Got Thousands of Users Before His App Launched

[00:00] We built an AI app that had 1,000 daily active users and 2,000 in MRR before it even launched. [00:06] It's called Monologue, and it's a text-to-speech app built by every entrepreneur in residence, Naveen Naidoo. Naveen built Monologue by himself, end to end, and we just launched it yesterday. And it's one of the fastest-growing and stickiest AI products we've ever built. Naveen and Monologue are so compelling because he's a single engineer competing with companies that have raised over $50 million and have hundreds of employees. And because of AI, he was able to build an incredibly polished, [00:34] incredibly sticky and compelling AI app in just a few months. So I brought Naveen onto the show, along with every COO, Brandon Gell, to talk about Monologue and talk about his journey. Because Monologue is something of an overnight success, but it took Naveen a long time to get there. [00:50] So we talk about Naveen's entrepreneurial journey. We talk about how he joined Every and the time he spent iterating and shipping on new ideas before he found Monologue. And then we talk about the stack he uses to build and ship production-grade apps by himself as a solo AI developer. Naveen is incredible. And if you really want to understand what is possible if you use AI tools well, this is the episode to watch. Let's dive in. [01:20] you [01:27] Naveen and Brandon, welcome to the show. Woo!

[01:31] Hey, Dan. Hey, Brendan. [01:35] It's really good to have you. [01:37] Yeah, I'm really happy. This is like first time recording a podcast for me and that to doing it like, you know, Dan, which I've been following for past five years. So dream come true here for me. [02:07] It's a smart dictation app, which we are launching publicly very soon. By the time this episode is out, I believe Monologue will be fully publicly released. It's currently in beta. And it's like, it's so, it's such a cool product. It's so well-made. It's a product that everyone uses internally. You've done an incredible job with it. You've built it completely by yourself. And it's already over $1,000 a month in recurring revenue. It's 1,000 MRR. [02:30] without us even launching it. So it's just, it's just growing. It's so cool. How does that feel? [02:36] it just like feels i'm first of all like really grateful just to like you know work with every because the thousand mrr thing i think if you're a normal indie hacker just reaching that milestone just takes you years upon years just here for me having this every audience having you and every team behind is just like i think dream team for me and obviously like product needs to work

[03:06] a problem there. But yeah, I'm really like excited, nervous. Everything is happening at the same time. I love that. And, and we also have Brandon here. Brandon is now the COO of Every. The last time you were on this podcast, you were only the head of studio. How does it feel? [03:24] Feels great. I'm echoing what Naveen said, dream come true with the dream team. I love it. Building dream products. So I want to start, I want to talk about a little bit about your journey to monologue. But before we do that, Naveen, can you just like demo us monologue so people who are listening and watching can get a sense for like the thing that you built? [03:48] Yes, let me share my screen. So first I'll talk about like writing an email and we can get into monologue visuals and other stuff as well. So let's say I want to write an email to Kieran. Kieran is a GM of Quora and he's a with user of monologue. So I'm like monologue sits on your laptop, like on your screen here. And I'm using my hotkey, which is right side option. And I'm double tapping it, which is going to be hands free mode. [04:16] Hey, Kieran, how is it going? Can we meet up tomorrow around 8am, actually make it 9am? And if that doesn't work, maybe you can check my availability here. [04:28] Thank you, Naveen. [04:30] Thank you. [04:31] So I just tapped right side option key again. [04:34] And here, the cool thing is the Kiran name, like it understands I'm talking to Kiran. It's good.

[04:43] and then here it fixed i mentioned about saying 8 a.m but i later self corrected and made it 9 a.m and then here there's something weird happening like how did this link got attached here so that is because in monologue we have instructions where here i mentioned my calendar schedule link so it just understands you really well so you can just like write with zero edits so this is just one of [05:13] added to when you're talking to LLMs, when you're talking to other [05:17] uh use cases as well yeah it's really cool so yeah for people who are listening like basically all he did was he talked into his computer mic and what monologue did is it transcribed it into a really well formatted email that included his calendar link and took out like ums and ahs and self-corrected certain things that he corrected um and it has like it's honestly become the default way that pretty much all of us do work at every um very quickly which is really cool it's it's [05:47] like a, um, [05:49] you know, Whisperflow or Super Whisper, which is something we can talk about, um, uh, as part of this, I think like the thing that, um, [05:57] The way that we've been talking about it, which I really love, is it types what you meant to say. [06:04] And, um, that whole thing has been like really, really cool. Um, what I want to, what I want to ask though, is like, you have this really polished product. It's a, it's, it's growing week over week. People are using it all the time. Like, I think there's someone who used it like over a thousand times last week or something like that. Like it's, it's pretty crazy how good it is. Um, yeah.

[06:24] But you are actually in the, even, even though you were working with us for a while, you're in the wilderness for a long time. So like you became an EIR. We, I think we had our first conversation. You said like about a year ago, almost exactly a year ago. And it took you from then until now to like find this and have it be like. [06:41] ready to launch. So [06:42] What was that like? Like, what was it like coming into every and what was it like kind of like going through the wilderness? And how did you get here? [06:51] So, yeah, it took me some time to get here. Maybe a quick journey would be I quit my job around 2023, right after I think ChargeGPT API got released. Good time to quit your job. Yeah. So there's this pending loom or something big is happening in the industry kind of a feeling. You can see ChargeGPT, I think, got released in December 2022. [07:21] And they released an API in March, 2023. I like vividly remember that because that's like one of the pivotal moments from me. Uh, so. [07:30] Yeah, like I quit my job. How did you get the conviction... [07:34] to quit your job in that moment. [07:37] Uh, not really. So what happened is in my previous company, I didn't get the conviction. I am like really nervous. Like I didn't know what I was doing. So in my previous, like I had this deal with my boss, previous boss saying, okay, I'm going to work three days a week with you. [07:53] And rest of the four days, let me figure out what I want to do with my life or like what I want to do next. And he's like more than happy to give me like he's paying me full time salary. He paid me full time salary during that three months period. But I still only work for three days and rest of the four days. I just like kept on like, you know, what to do. And only then I think ChargeGPT API got released, right? So I started hacking products around the same time I released this app called FridayGPT.

[08:22] So, that's my first time hitting some random stranger giving me money to buy an app. So, that made a big difference. And I'm like, okay, I had to do this. How did that feel? That is like, you know, I never met that guy. I don't even know who he's right. But that's a really great feeling that, okay, I can earn something of my own just from this pure, like, the idea is just in my mind. I thought about that. [08:52] executed and someone paid for it that's like eye-opening for me and uh i thought okay i had to do this full-time right uh so i just quit and then started my own company came back to india actually before i used to live in japan so i like made pretty big changes around 2023 and yeah after that i started my company and i started working on uh [09:18] multiple bunch of products. And one of the biggest mistakes I made during that time is I just worked on one product for six months or something. I didn't even release. [09:27] So it's just like sitting on my laptop. So that's called SendWisely. And like... What product was it again? It's an email marketing tool, like similar to kit.com. Okay. This is like the cardinal thing. I've never even seen this product that you've built. I didn't even talk to anyone about that because I'm like really ashamed that I built that in my like, you know, just on my sitting every day sitting, going to coffee shop or something, building that. And I never showed anyone.

[09:57] I didn't do anything at all with it. I just kept on building, kept on adding features. And that made me like, you know, [10:08] So technically I'm like able to just play around with tech stuff, but never really actually, you know, went into business. Okay. I have to sell it. I have to market this. I never thought about all that stuff, but later on, okay, whatever is done is done. Let me just start again from scratch. So I again went back to the drawing board. I made a Mac app and here this time I had a goal. I have to release this Mac app. [10:33] in one week. So I built it, I posted it on Reddit. And then a lot of people wanted to have a similar kind of problem. And then they also wanted it. It's kind of like a wrapper, but the thing is, you can select a text and hit a hotkey and you can run a prompt on top of it. [10:54] So that's just idea is very simple. So like a lot of people are going back and forth and charge GPT and doing the same thing, right? Maybe fix grammar or some other thing. So selected text. It's the funny thing is that's such a good idea. You know, like that, that idea there are, I mean, Ed, Edmar, a different, you know, EIR, you know, every team member messaged me yesterday saying that there's a company that like wants to talk to us. It's a, they do $30 million. [11:24] out of Brazil, and it's just a ChatGPT wrapper. You can ask the same exact questions that you asked ChatGPT, but also in this tool, and they do 30 million ARR. So that idea very well could have been your idea. And I know people bought it. So what caused you to sort of lose steam on it?

[11:43] Yeah, so it did like really great job for me, like at least with the confidence. At one point, I even reached 5k per month. I'm like that, like Mac app is making 5k. That's like due peak, like, you know, rapper season. So I'm making ton of money and getting good eyeballs on it. But one mistake I made is... [12:06] user have to bring their own API key. [12:08] for it. So it's a very niche product and it's a one-time fee. So if user have to pay at the time, $39 or $29, I don't exactly remember. So that's a niche product and kind of like after that, I don't know what to do. So I started, okay, let me build another Mac app so that I can bring in more revenue. So I built another Mac app called Screen Time Plus. And then slowly, like I started [12:38] this is going to be my next five years. [12:40] It's just I'm making some random apps. And the only thing that I got really good at or compounding wise is I'm able to build apps really fast. [12:50] and then only build that one single core feature and [12:54] like post it on Reddit, post it on X, get eyeballs, convert them to sales. But I don't really have any solid business plan or [13:03] okay, how can I take this to the next level? And that's when I met you guys, like, [13:07] And join as EAS. That's really interesting. You're saying so many things that feel very familiar from my own journey. And I'm just like, this is why I love working with you. Like, this is why you're awesome. Like, just things that, like, lessons that I learned, too, along the way. Like, for example, one of the things you said is,

[13:25] that you just negotiated with your boss to only work three days a week rather than having to quit your job all at once. I think there's this sort of feeling that, oh, you have to do startups in a certain way and you have to be all in from the very beginning. But there's a lot to be said for... [13:40] stepping like putting your toe in the water and like you know shipping learning to ship apps like while you still have a job so you have more more runway and less pressure another thing you said that i that i i really resonate with is um [13:53] Well, one is working on something for like a long period of time and then not shipping it and then realizing that was bad and then really forcing yourself to be like, OK, I'm going to ship every I'm going to ship something in one week. I'm going to like build all these different apps. And I think that's a really good part of the of the learning experience is just like go from nothing to an app that you're trying to sell instead of like being off in your cave, like hacking away on something that like no one no one actually wants. [14:19] Yeah, so I definitely vibe with that. [14:22] Yeah, like that's a big, I think, like bulb turning on moment for me, which is, oh, I can just do things like just have a small idea, just code it up, release it. It doesn't have to be like, oh, a lot of features have to be there or building has to be there. I just figured it on the way. So like that's a big, I think, mental shift for me. [14:46] so that during that time. [14:48] I was thinking about how I wonder if people, when they work on something that they haven't shared with anybody, a lot of times it's for a product that they themselves can't immediately use and don't actually immediately use themselves versus if it's something that they actually use themselves, they're excited to share it with people. And that's kind of a good indicator. And it's honestly the way that we build products is we won't build anything that we don't use all the time. Yeah.

[15:18] sort of like a rule, an unwritten rule that we now have, um, because it, it'll never, it'll never launch, I guess is what we're learning. Yeah. And it's the best way to, um, know that the product you're building is good. Cause like we just, if we use it and then we get the rest of the team to use it, we're pretty sure that the audience is going to like it. And that's just a really cool loop. And I think we're in this, um, [15:40] We're in this unique time where [15:42] the game board has been reset. [15:44] because of AI. So there's all these new opportunities to do new stuff that [15:49] Um, you can just look for problems that you have personally. And if you have that problem, there's a good chance that other people have it and that it hasn't been solved yet, which is really, really cool. [15:58] That's kind of a good segue to how monologue came about, too. [16:03] Because... [16:05] My, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is we were built, we were launching, um, [16:12] TLDR. [16:13] No. Okay. Let me give you a quick timeline, maybe just to refresh. So I joined last year, October. So that's the last quarter of last year. And I started working on TLDR. It's kind of like synthetic podcast generation from your meetings, Slack, Discord. It just churns everything and converts into a beautiful podcast that you can listen. [16:39] TLDR, those were the days. [16:43] still get pitches for people to do that. I'm like, we tried it, bro. It doesn't work. We launched it, like, right before Christmas on this, like, crazy, chaotic schedule where we launched, like, four things in a row. Actually, it did fairly well, but there was, I don't know, it was, yeah, anyway. Interesting. Yeah, maybe we positioned it the wrong way. I don't want to accuse anybody of positioning it the wrong way, but... Me and Brandon had a big fight before it came out, and he was, I'll say with the record, he was correct about how we should position it. I went a little galaxy-brained, but

[17:13] Anyway, I don't know. It would have worked out. Yeah. So for me, like from my side, what happened really is, I think it didn't really sync well with our every, every audience. No one, to be honest, I think I've worked on that for 10 weeks. Internally, no one really used it. Like no one is listening to those podcasts. No one is reading those meeting notes and stuff. So, and even when we released it, I think as a, every, uh, [17:37] Like we have this every audience, right? So they're also like, okay, this is cool, but I'm not going to use this. Obviously, like kind of a vibe we got. Yeah. So after that, I took some time off, like two weeks, I didn't touch my laptop. I'm like, you know, I... [17:51] continuously worked on 10 weeks for this product. And I did the same mistake. Like I previously did one year ago, which is just working on something which I didn't like put it out fast, real fast. [18:02] So coming back after the holidays, I made myself, okay, I'm going to release one experiment per week. [18:09] I remember Brandon having a KPI as well for that quarter where experiments from studios, like number of experiments from studios. And that really helped me also. I'm not going to worry about creating products and stuff. I'm going to just think about creating as many experiments as possible. So after that, I did Kairos. A lot of every audience might remember Kairos. They love it. People love that. Yeah. Yeah.

[18:39] And even before launching, we got to know this doesn't really have commercial success because you have to actually sell the books within the app to make any kind of money. If not, how are you going to make money? Like people are not going to pay you $20 on top of already buying books. So that didn't work out. But people loved it. People loved the article. I still get like emails and messages saying they like it. And they kind of like try to include that into their reading habits. [19:09] I started working on Grammarly Alternative. That is because I'm like from India. And... Oh my God, I forgot all of these. [19:19] You guys, you remember it now. Oh yeah, now I do. It's all coming back. Yeah, I blacked that out from my brain. [19:26] Yeah, so after that, I did that experiment where, you know, I'm from India and my English is not that great when I'm writing. So I use Grammarly a lot, but Grammarly is really slow. It's shitty, to be honest. [19:39] has to make a better product here. [19:42] I asked Sharon on the team, Kiran is paying for it. Yes, she's paying for it. So I'm paying for it. Why not? [19:48] Why can't I take this up? So I took that up. I actually first started with iOS app. So within one week, I released the iOS app. We even emailed some of early adopters. We put up a form. It's going well. [20:04] But the energy of that app, like to be like overall usage is good. It's going in the right direction. It says that energy around this idea is not that great because, okay, this is already like you're solving like 20 years old problem kind of.

[20:19] you know, thing people are not really excited to. Like your energy or the or user's energy, which one? Everyone's energy, I would say. It didn't feel like a creative act. [20:30] It just felt like we were solving very specific problems. [20:35] Yeah. I wasn't sure how we were going to make something mind-blowing there. [20:39] Yeah. So that's the same thing. But I remember thinking this is such a good idea. [20:45] Yeah, we released an iOS app. I think at one point we got like to around 200 users using it, using the keyboard, actually changing their own default keyboard. And we also have a Mac app where it highlights the corrections and you can correct it. So technically we invested a lot of stuff in there. [21:04] But it's just that didn't feel like people are like adopting it that fast, that high. Yeah. So during, during that time, uh, so what happened is, uh, [21:16] I am like pretty low. I am like not motivated to work on Unwrite. I just want some new fresh ideas. So on the side, I didn't tell anyone on the side. I just made Jotl. Like at that time, that's a working name of Monologue. So I just made that app for myself and I just started using it. [21:36] Why did you make it? Like, what, like, what was the thing where you're like, Oh, I just want to like mess around with this. And I won't tell anyone, but this is kind of fun. [21:44] Yeah. Like when I joined the program, like, uh, with every, one of the ideas is whisper flow alternative, but better. Like that's one of the things I, it's on my, uh, like I was on the list. Too bad you didn't put that higher on the list. I don't think, I don't think we were ready for it. I'll, I have comments on this, but you keep going with, with the timeline. Yeah. Yeah. So what

[22:14] Edmar, one of the users of Unwrite, and he's also EAR, so he mentioned, I want this voice to text in keyboard. Can you do that? And I got a similar kind of request from other users. And I also want that. And other thing is that one of the previous apps I talked about, FridayGPT, it has that feature. [22:35] But I already know users are actually like using voice and how they are like, it's helping them a lot. So I talked with a couple of users and the thing is, it's not a great product. [22:48] like two years ago that I built. It's not really great product. So I just, okay, let me make a really great product with all the things I learned. Because now I feel like I'm really confident with my technical skills, product skills. So I just like thrown away everything and just started the code from scratch. I'm like just looking at my commit history. Are you interested in looking at my commit history? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [23:12] Let me... [23:14] Okay, quick break from the episode. Your home just became smart thanks to Alexa Plus, the sponsor of this episode. Amazon just released Alexa Plus, an Alexa with a state-of-the-art AI architecture. It's a state-of-the-art language model packed into an Alexa so it can access thousands of services and devices.

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[25:19] Yeah. So I think it's just the compounding, right? If anyone out there who is like looking to like start or create a startup or create a product and stuff, one thing I would say is just keep on building, keep on like creating as many experiments as possible. Because once you hit that one great idea, you can just release it and do this. You can see the commit history, right? [25:42] So, yeah, so we're seeing on the commit history. [25:49] like April 15th. [25:51] And I did like bunch of changes, bunch of things. And on April 17th, I have V1.0.1. [26:00] Wow. [26:01] So in two days I released it. So yeah. [26:05] And there's something that I just saw that's interesting in there. You have a commit in there for auto-enter, which I think is like one of people's favorite features of monologue where you can... [26:16] You can speak into... [26:18] monologue and it automatically will process what you say, fix it, and then automatically [26:26] paste it and click enter, which if you are a developer allows you to really stay in flow because you can just speak and you don't need to like use your keyboard at all. I use it for on discord. I use it in messages. I use it in warp. And that was, I think I saw that on the 11th or was that the 17th that you committed that? [26:45] Yes, I did. Here. Okay, I'm just going to think. So it's like, it's one of the most important differentiating features, and it's one of the first things you built. And it, to me, it just is a nice...

[26:56] It just tells me [26:58] okay, you just need like one killer feature to really convince yourself and see if people really want to use what you're building. [27:04] And then a lot of the work that you've done is like polish and fixing bugs and adding things here or there. But like a lot of the product... [27:12] was there the day that you launched it. [27:15] So you can have like a simple product that works super well. [27:18] But that last 20% is like so hard. Yeah, 100%. So at that time, what I'm doing is on 15th, I built that. And I started using Jotel at that time to build Jotel. [27:32] You know, I've been dogfooting. [27:33] Uh, like the auto enter thing came because, ah, why am I like always hitting enter? Why can't like Jotl do that for me? So I just added that. Uh, so kind of like all the features that first two days that you see is, uh, around that. [27:50] That's the beautiful thing about building for yourself is you know that that's what you want. And also, it's the beautiful thing about building inside of a company like Every because you've just been like flooded with people saying like, I need this or this isn't working or whatever. And so you have this like really, really high fidelity feedback loop all the time of good feedback. [28:08] Yes, 100%. So after that, what happened, like two days, I pushed it. On 18th, we have the show and tell on Fridays. So I think that's one of the fun meetings. We usually, we have a ton of high signal feedback. We get high signal feedback there. So I did the demo of Unwrite. I'm like pretty, you know, like not that feeling great about the progress I'm making with Unwrite. Then at the end, like maybe five minutes or 10 minutes remaining, I demoed this app. Like,

[28:37] I've been like working past two days on this and like Kieran got really excited about this. I don't remember like everyone else. Like I just remember Kieran's reaction because Kieran also has his own Python script, like some crappy version of it. He mentioned he uses his local whisper thing. So and Kieran got excited. I got excited. So I just released the app to Kieran. Like I think right there, I just sent him the bill directly. [29:07] feature he asked us, I need local whisper models because he likes local whisper models. So I just added that feature for Kieran and slowly Nitesh started using, Alex started using, Brandon like that. Everyone started using, everyone started giving me feedback. [29:23] And then it's just like, [29:25] Like, yeah, after races, that's it. [29:28] Yeah, this was a really exciting time. And I'm laughing to myself because I remember... [29:35] I remember feeling, I'm going to go back to sort of like why we felt like we're going to do this. And this is like an easy decision, but I wanted to like a quick anecdote. [29:44] I remember we created a Discord channel [29:47] And, um, [29:49] And Kieran hit a bug where like it wasn't working for him. And he sent you a message that I honestly will never forget. He said, immediate churn. [29:59] With a screenshot and classic Kieran. Yeah. He just, he said immediate churn. I just looked at that and I was like, holy shit, he's right. This is immediate churn.

[30:13] And just saying it so bluntly, I think, and that's sort of, you know, a version of the feedback that you get from everybody here, I think has made it like a pretty bulletproof product. But yeah, I'll never forget immediate churn. I want on a hat. Yeah, go for it. I mean, I take Kieran's like feedbacks real seriously, because I think he's like the... [30:36] top 1%, 10% users where, you know, if they hit a bug, you immediately churn. If I keep Kieran happy, I'm going to keep like a ton of people happy. [30:48] I just, I just submitted a PR on Quora, which he denied. So like, I know the bar, the bar for Kieran is pretty high. He was like, this is vibe coded. I was like, you're right. It is. [31:00] Which is crazy because he's the number one vibe coder. He's just like, he's, he's wielded it so well. [31:06] it. [31:08] um i i think this is an interesting product for me too because [31:13] It is the first product that we've incubated inside of every that I have not either built the first version of or been like intimately involved in the building of it was the first product where like, I was just off doing other stuff. And I just saw a bunch of people talking on discord about this. At the time, it was called Jotl. And then we renamed it monologue. And I was like, I guess I'll try it. And I tried it. And I was like, Whoa, this is good. And that was like the coolest. That is the coolest feeling ever, I have to say to just feel like we're making awesome stuff. And I just like had nothing to do with it.

[31:43] It was just really fun to watch that happen. [31:45] I want to talk real quick about like the, um, [31:48] like the strategy behind it. So, [31:52] there was there was obviously like navin you built the first version of it and i remember in that show and tell i was i had sort of an unlock and was like we need to do this but the reason that i felt like we needed to do it even though it felt kind of wrong because like there were other companies that were already existed that were doing this and typically all the products that we built have been like net new products [32:15] It was very hard to get over the idea that we weren't going to build something new. We were just going to try to take in a concept that already existed and make it better. [32:23] But the reason that like I got so comfortable with that and actually reached out to Dan and was like, dude, we have to do this immediately. And you were like, maybe and then you used it and you were like, I'm totally in was I realized that people subscribe to every because they want it to be the last they want to be super up to speed on everything. [32:44] on ai and they want to use our individual products but what we want for them is that it's their last subscription that they have outside of a chat gpt or cloud so they have a chat gpt subscription and in every subscription and i realized [32:59] Very, very good voice dictation is... [33:02] It's one of the main tools that people are using, and we're actually doing us subscribers a disservice if we don't include this as a part of their bundle. We just need to figure out a way to do it that feels right to us and sort of like levels up the whole thing.

[33:18] industry. Yeah. Which, you know, you started this in April. We're recording this September 10th. I think we've done that over the past... [33:27] many months it's taken a long time to get it to be like really really good yeah i think that was my hesitation too is like um [33:34] I wanted to only release this if we felt like it felt like in every product, like it felt [33:40] like hours instead of just, you know, we just vibe coded something and it's like kind of a shitty thing. And I really do feel that way. Like you're, you're an absolute craftsman. It's a, it's a beautiful product. [33:50] Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, so yeah, I do had that in mind, like, uh, because when, even when I presenting that, I remember I know this is like already existing product. Like I'm just, I just made it for myself. Like, don't like, you know, this is my baby. Don't be harsh kind of [34:09] when I'm presenting it. But, uh, once you know, uh, like Brandon talked about this, like, [34:16] Don't worry about like copycats, like being that, like, you know, uh, because we have already done of every audience. If no one else is subscribing, you're going to anyway get this every subscribers who are going to like use it. So just focus on every subscribers. Don't worry too much about like external, like you being competing with that initial period. So that actually made me a little bit, you know, okay, I can actually make this work because I can just focus on every audience. [34:46] in a good app. [34:47] So,

[34:48] That put me at ease because I don't want to like... [34:52] people to think like I'm just copying something. Totally. And this is the first time that I felt like the bundle strategy that we've been pushing for a long time, it's like starting to like really work. So for you who, who, [35:06] don't know whatever you pay one price you get access to the all the writing that we do and all the software that we make and um [35:14] It makes so much more sense to... [35:17] build monologue in the context of a bundle because, um, [35:21] If you're comparing, okay, I can buy one app or I can buy a subscription and get a bunch of apps plus really good writing about AI, it makes that... [35:31] The value is so much greater. Yeah, that calculus makes a lot more sense. And it's just been really interesting to watch that happen because it – I didn't even think that we would be building something like Monologue as part of this strategy, but it just – [35:44] Seems to work. [35:46] Yeah. Yeah. And that, uh, that strategy really helped the way monologue right now it is because, uh, what happened is April is done. Maybe I can show like initial periods because the uncertainty. Yeah, sure. Show us the usage. Yeah. So the usage here is that like, I keep track of two things, which is the number of words that are getting dictated and number of times the, you know, monologue got activated.

[36:16] 17th, 18th, like April. And then I gave access. I started adding like analytics the following week because people have been using it a lot internally. And here you can see this is not my usage. I removed my usage because I do a bunch of testing, right? Initial period. [36:33] So this is somewhat like we got 130 users per day. [36:37] Slowly, it went to 150, 200, like 300. [36:42] 350 and this is yeah this is the number of times that somebody clicked the button to start dictating [36:50] Yes. Okay. [36:52] Cool. And for people who are listening, like, yeah, it's just a smoothly, it's a graph that is smoothly going up. And this is a usage graph, which is very hard to do. I mean, obviously, there's, there's jagged, there's, it's a little jagged for like weekends and stuff. But I think it's really important to say, um, [37:11] We work on a lot of products. We've all built a lot of products over our lives. And seeing something that just like smoothly goes up in usage is extremely rare. Yeah. Here you can see the week over week graph, like which is like initial week we got to 30, but slowly end of May, we are hitting around 1500. [37:32] 1500 users per week? Usages per week, yes. Usage, okay. Got it. I think we are hitting around 27. [37:39] 18. These are all internal users. [37:42] Yeah, this is all every internal. If you want, maybe we might have to blur out the emails here.

[37:49] This is only to June, right? [37:51] Yeah, show us the full graph. [37:54] Oh, full gaffe? Okay, let me... [37:58] the end to date. We might have to let out the emails. Oh wow, look at that. Look at this. Even better. Yeah. Trying to be hating 7000 usages per day. Yeah, I mean this is crazy. Per day. This isn't even linear. This is [38:15] There's no landing page for this product. Naveen, show us the landing page. [38:22] So for people who are listening, it literally just says monologue and then download. And then it says, please don't use this because it's a public beta. [38:32] And it has a little made by every sticker at the bottom. So yeah, that's crazy. And it makes me very confident in this product. [38:45] There are a bunch of competitors. A lot of them have raised up. [38:49] millions of dollars. Yeah. Like we have a competitor, Whisperflow, that's raised like 50 million dollars. [38:55] We have invested in this product less than $20,000 in one person. Dean is building this product alone. We should talk like a little bit about like how we have supported you with a bunch of other like people to like really make this super artful. But I just think that that's crazy. And it's one of the, [39:15] It's one of the most obvious proof points to me that we just live in a different world. And raising $50 million to do something is not...

[39:24] only unnecessary, it... [39:27] puts you in such a corner. Yeah. Like, like we have already built something that, that, [39:32] is successful. Period. Because we can build really quick. Naveen's really talented. And we haven't invested a stupid amount of money into it. And it doesn't need to be a billion dollar outcome. It could be like, I'm at this point, this will be a multimillion dollar outcome. And I feel like we have that in the bag. And that's really special to build from that place because you're building from your front foot instead of trying to dig yourself out of a hole. [40:01] is worth talking about because this is a very, very artful kind of like teenage engineering style product. Can you demo the welcome screen? Do you have that set up? [40:11] Yes. I know Naveen is so proud of the onboarding because he has a button that's easily accessible to reset the onboarding. I just want people to like, yeah, just go through the onboarding again. So just to set some context around, okay, like what happened is, I think end of June, [40:34] Brandon and I sat out in one of our calls and like, okay, this is working. People are actually using it, but. [40:43] UI looks shit. Like UX is shit. Like we are just like not happy with the way things are. So we immediately bought all like [40:51] Lucas. So Lucas is our head of creative lead. Yes. So I think having Lucas on a project like this, just from start,

[41:02] Jess, I think made a ton of decisions, whatever decisions that you are seeing within the product happen. So Lucas bought that Lucas energy, every synergy into this monologue from the start. That's why the way it works, it is working right now. So let me show you quick things. [41:24] I remember when Naveen and I had this one-on-one, I said, [41:28] this app needs to do three things. It needs to work really well. It needs to look like teenage engineering or something like that. It needs to look really different. What's teenage engineering for people who don't know? Teenage engineering is a hardware company that makes... [41:42] beautiful recording devices, music making devices, computer cases. They just have a very cool aesthetic. [41:51] It needs to look kind of like teenage engineering. It needs to look different and it needs to be a part of the every bundle. And if we do those three things, this product will work. [42:01] And that, [42:02] Seems to be happening right now. And the way that you executed on the design side is just out of control to me. [42:10] So hundred percent, like this is one of our inspirations. And Lucas like worked and gave us this monophone to be never thought of monophone at all. Like initially, I remember Jotel being just a blob of like text, like just radiating. And like Lucas came up with this monophone idea where, okay, you have to feel like you're talking to something. So that's why. Yeah. Anyway, let me show you like the onboarding.

[42:40] Thank you. [42:41] *music* [42:49] Thank you. [42:51] Thank you. [42:52] Awesome. Yeah. So this is the onboarding where you see the sound and animation. Maybe Brandon can talk more about the sound and everything that we... Yeah, I just got to say, I love it. And we just have so many people reach out being like, that was awesome. Just from just downloading the app and starting it. I had someone who has a fairly big Twitter audience that messaged me being like, [43:15] this is the first time I've gotten emotional using software and many years. And I was like, [43:19] Fuck yeah, we've done. We did it. We did it. I don't know. We just had such a strong perspective of like, we want the, well, we didn't even know. Lucas actually came up with the idea, the word for monophone. So he was like, this is the monophone design was really special. We knew we wanted sound to be really cool. He also came up with the name monologue. Yeah, he did. He did come up with the name too. Yeah. [43:41] We wanted sounds to be a part of it. So we have this really cool intro sound that my friend Jake Sheriff made. [43:48] Um, [43:49] We brought in a designer to do the app design and the landing page design, which is the first time we've ever done that. We've always done app and landing page design internally. This time we brought somebody else from the outside. And he's great. And he's amazing. And like Lucas did creative direction. He did actual design. And it was like a very special combination. And then we brought in a guy to do animations. So it was just like...

[44:13] Also, in the middle of this process, I learned that Naveen is like top 0.0002% in India at math and science for whatever cohort you are of that test. And I learned in this process he's also very good at managing other people. [44:34] Rare combination. A very rare combination. [44:37] Oh, thank you. I don't know what to say. So I think it's just like, I feel like I'm in a video game, you know, collecting all these skills so that I can build this monologue. So I think in my previous job, I was managing people. So yeah, I collected that skill. And later on, like, when I'm working, it's just like everything came together. [44:59] nicely here. [45:00] And yeah. [45:02] For people who are watching, I think there's probably a lot of people who are like, wow, this is awesome. I want to start doing this too. Can you tell us a little bit about your workflow? [45:11] What tools are you using? How are you using AI in your workflow? All that kind of stuff. [45:15] Yes. So for the initial stages, the zero to one, it's really, really important for you to just keep it. [45:24] like just go one single feature and like use AI, obviously. And one of the, uh, key, like. [45:32] uh, things I used initially at that time. I remember windsurf. It just feels like ages ago. So I was using, yeah, like I even like, it feels like a year ago, like when I've said windsurf, but I'm using winds, I was using windsurf a lot at during that time. And I think windsurf is one of the first ideas to introduce this agentic coding as well. I remember. So my code base has

[46:02] And right now, my tech stack looks... [46:06] cloud code a lot like most of the code that's in monologue is like done by cloud code uh and then recently i've been using codex a lot so let me show you like codex uh maybe yeah show us yeah we've never actually shown codex on this show um except for the the what we've shown that we've shown the web version because we had uh the uh the guy who launched it inside of open ai on the show for the launch but um [46:31] We have not, we've not gone there in a while. So yeah, tell us about how you're using Codex. Yeah, let me show you the Codex. I think around May time, May 18th, they released it. And I initially got some errors, but 18th, you can see how many tasks I'm giving it to Codex. [46:48] basically like every day you have a task because you're just scrolling through a list of tasks for people who are listening. And yeah, every day you have a little task, you're kicking off a codex or maybe looks like multiple tasks a day. A lot. There's a lot. [47:02] Yeah, it all depends on my mood as well. Like if I'm in that mood of, OK, today I will be in a manager mode and let me just give a bunch of tasks to all these AIs and like review it. [47:18] But now it looks like you skipped a month. So why did you not use it for a month? [47:23] Oh, clockwork. Like that made a big difference for me. I think the Opus 4.1 got released. Yeah. I think what happened is I was using [47:31] this with, I don't remember the models. Like, I think 01, 02,

[47:36] Oh, three. Oh, I think it's O three. It's a, it's a fine tuned O three. Yeah. Yeah. Oh three. Yes. I think during that time it was, it's really great. Uh, and after that Opus 4.1 got released and I'm just like completely moved to cloud code. And now I'm back to again, codex, uh, CLI. So actually like, yeah, here you can see it. I'm not, uh, you can see I'm using codex actually. Like I, today I just developed, uh, this, like I'm working on this, uh, monologue speed test website. [48:06] Oh. [48:07] And I just made a plan. [48:10] and within the plan. [48:13] you [48:15] Thank you. [48:17] Yeah, within the plant, we have these phases, phase one, phase two, phase three, and I'm just implementing these phases. Phase three, phase three. Yeah. So I'm just using codecs a lot of GPT-5 high and medium is so good. [48:35] Interesting. Tell us about why. Why did you switch? Why do you think it's better? [48:40] Uh, one, I think, uh, 4.1, it's just like, I, I got like, uh, with code, cloud code, it just says like, you are absolutely correct. Absolutely. Right. And it doesn't like push back on my, like whenever I'm, uh, trying to, you know, get some proper feedback on my implementation here, for example, I actually used monologue too. [49:03] dump this, here you can see like [49:05] and it gave me

[49:07] And he's just highlighting a bunch of text where he's asking questions about his codebase. [49:13] Yeah. And it gave me a really great plan. I think planning is really, really good compared to Cloud Code. Here, what happens with... [49:23] Yeah, planning and even with the code. [49:26] One thing I observed is, actually, I have a video as well recorded where I compared cloud code versus codex, not codex, but GPT-5 high or medium. One thing I clearly observed is... [49:38] Codex X works on [49:40] what you asked. It doesn't go into some like his own creator. It's much more precise. Yeah, much more precise. And the code it generates feels like some senior engineer wrote. Instead of cloud code, it kind of feels like some junior engineer wrote. I know it's a big statement, but it just feels like with a ton of, uh, [49:59] comments with a ton of like the logic it writes, it's much more like not well thought out. But if you look at Codex code, yeah. [50:09] Yeah, I think you're right. [50:12] GPT-5 code does feel like [50:15] If I want a precise change and I want to be confident that it's doing the right thing, I can use GPT-5 and it'll do it well. And so it's got that precision thing. I think of Cloud Code as being high in industriousness. So it's just going to do a bunch of stuff, which is actually helpful in certain circumstances. So, for example, I wanted to commit some code to Quora, and so I needed to get my repo running locally.

[50:40] And [50:41] Quad code is just really good for that because it's just going to keep banging its head against the wall until it figures it out. It's very industrious. And GPT-5 will be like, well, I can't do this because I'm... [50:50] you know, whatever. There's like 15 precise things that it thinks are wrong, you know, and then you have to go through it. [50:56] each one with it. And, um, yeah, so I've been, I've been liking, I've been liking, uh, Codex as well. I'm curious, um, [51:03] I've heard that a lot of these models are not that good at writing Swift. So what has been your experience? [51:11] One, even during unwrite development, which is the Grammarly alternative that I was working on, it's technically complex, meaning you have to show this red swiggly lines on top of any app. So that's a very highly technical challenge. Like you can't just use some external library to build that out. So during that time, I was using O1 a lot. [51:33] And O1 is really, really good. O1 and O3 Mini, I remember being really, really good at writing Swift code and writing highly technical, complex apps. So I always have a soft corner just for O-series models, the thinking models for Swift because it has that extra connection. [51:54] like intelligence when compared to any other model on the market. So I'm just like, use that a lot. And I'm, [52:01] So if you compare, Cloud Code is really good at implementing the features. Like you can just give it, it does that work. And it's good at Swift. Actually, Opus 4.5 is really good at Swift. I used it. Like you can see that. And, but code, GPT-5 high, like 5 high. I recently experienced hotkey works. Like that's a very complicated work because you have to like go into niche, like, you

[52:31] you [52:31] which is written by Naxt in 1980s. That's a code that is still being run on Mac, right? And it has very, very bare minimum documentation, but G5 High is so good at ripping through all this complex code. So I think that's one of the biggest... [52:51] unlock for me why I didn't hire or like get help from other developer. [52:57] It's just so crazy thinking about before this stuff existed. Solving that problem would be... [53:03] You might like hire somebody for like a year to solve that. It'd be like a $200,000 problem. Yeah. Yeah. [53:11] And now... [53:12] It's just not. [53:15] It's so it's kind of, to me, it almost makes me sad to say, because like there's been so much blood lost over people, you know, and sweat expelled to solve these problems. And now it's like, we live in a world where we, [53:30] where we're like, nah, that's not a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Like before you used to like, you know, be very scared of these kind of technical problems. Now I'm like, okay, I have. [53:40] GPT-5. I don't have to worry. You got your partner. I got my partner. I have Opus 4.5. Those are my team members. I'm going to delegate those tasks to them. So I think that gave me really big confidence. I can do anything I want. [53:58] I love that. All right. So we're about to launch monologue when this is out. It may actually already be launched.

[54:06] What are your what are your hopes for it? Where do you hope to be in a year? What would be what would be a success for you? [54:12] For me, internal goal we have is in one year, we want to hit 1 million ARR for Monologue. [54:21] By the way, every as a whole just hit 1 million or like a little bit more than 1 million like recently. So that's a big goal. But I honestly, I think we can do it. I definitely think we can do it. Yeah. So that's my biggest goal is to hit 1 million ARR. But that's a big goal. In one year, if we do it, like that would be crazy. [54:42] is like release the iOS app. That's like one thing we are getting a lot of requests around and I want to release that iOS app. It's also technically challenging because Apple doesn't make it easy for us developers. So we had to somehow find loopholes. [54:57] iOS and then end of this, uh, [55:01] I [55:03] reach 10k. [55:05] MRR. So that's my goal. [55:08] Great. I love it. Oh, you're definitely going to do that. Yeah. [55:12] Definitely. Brandon's looking at the strike graph right now. I'm looking at the numbers. I think you're going to do that. We're going to do more of that. Yeah. One of the really cool thing is, you know, every audience just kind of amplifies it a lot. So, yeah, it's crazy. And I just love the way we are building because I think it's distribution first. So Dan did like really hard work for the last seven years.

[55:42] in and uh yeah just in the content mind for yeah five and a half years yeah uh it's paying off yeah paying off now so [55:55] Um, well, Naveen, I'm psyched for you. I feel so honored that we get to work with you and, uh, we get to launch monologue. I think it's going to be amazing and I can't wait to see what comes next. [56:05] Thank you. Thank you. Same here. Like I'm just like every day waking up, I'm just grateful that I have this team and I have AI and I can do anything like, like, yeah, right now I'm in that zone where if user customer has some kind of problem, we can solve it. So. [56:25] I love it. What a way to end. Yeah, I can do anything. Awesome, man. Awesome. Yeah. See ya. [56:55] about ChatGPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat. [57:04] craving for more it's not just a show it's a journey into the future with dan shipper as the captain of the spaceship [57:12] So do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life.

[57:17] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.