I talk to AI for a living now. The core interface for me as the business owner is just like a cloud code window with 50 tabs. >> Meet Josh Moore. He spent 5 years running Uber New York with 70 people reporting to him. But today, he actually runs Wave AI completely alone. 40,000 paid subscribers, 15,000 hours of recording every single day. And before Wave, he actually never built software. >> So many of these tasks were like humans pretending to be computers, and now you just have computers being computers. >> So today, we're going to dive into it. How he did all of this bootstrapped, his business philosophy, and how he operationally does this as a one-man team. This is the Appliantus Podcast. My name is Freddy. Let's get into it. >> >> Josh, you have to tell me what's going on here. >> Well, it's good to be with you. I have always sort of been in tech. Notably, I worked for about 5 and 1/2 years as the head of Uber New York, sort of building that from zero to very large, but on the business side, operations, a very like hands-on kind of thing. But I always really wanted to make software. ChatGPT came out November of 2022, so about 4 years ago already, which feels kind of crazy. And really, as soon as it did, I saw it as an opportunity to um really get that last bit of help to become a software engineer. And I started kind of hacking on some ideas, and I built a couple of things, and one of them was sort of a very basic thing um that would summarize audio. So you would record for a bit, it would take that speech and bring it to text, and then take that text and summarize it. What sort of struck me in the ChatGPT release, you know, that kind of blew everyone's mind, what I focused on was that it was able to summarize text like computers couldn't do that before. And so I thought there was just a big opportunity to sort of apply that anywhere that I could. Had always wanted to make a mobile app and I really started working on it kind of that that winter, so like 3 and 1/2 years ago. Grinding and grinding and eventually hooked up with Adapti to do all the money stuff. I've just been kind of working on it, you know, ever since. Notably, it's a a one-man show. That's, you know, there's a few unusual things about it. One is that I've never built software before, but the other is that I just continue to sort of do this alone across customer service to engineering and everything in in between. So, what the app does and it's a mobile app. It's also a desktop app and a web app, but it basically takes audio and makes it summaries. And so people use that often for meetings, but also other things like doctor's appointments and lectures and podcast interviews and things like that. And so like you said, we have about 30 I have about 40,000 paid subscribers and those folks are doing about 15,000 hours a day of recording. We're in the 6 to 7 million dollar ARR range. Obviously, everyone listening to this Anyone who didn't just wake up understands that AI provides incredible leverage. Since the whole thing is on the computer, it's a digital, you know, it's an app. Every piece of it can be approached with AI. There is chat support in the app if you're having trouble and email support. And I have sort of I have always done that by hand. That's been sort of the last thing that I've AI-ified because it's important to me to get that kind of feedback directly. But everything else from product suggestions and actioning those into features and writing the emails to announce those features and, you know, just over the last 3 years things have gotten easier and easier as AI sort of gets its claws into every little thing. So, I can get tremendous leverage with that and so that sort of kept up with my need for help and has allowed me to sort of not bring anyone else on. >> In your past, I know that you were working at Uber, you're probably managing so many things, so many people. Now working on your own, which one is which one is harder? >> It's different, obviously, in a lot of ways. That it was a business all about, you know, the real world atoms moving people around, talking to drivers, their vehicles, very like real world material, dealing with other humans, really. And this is sort of in some ways the exact opposite of that. But, you know, I I hired about 100 people at Uber at peak. I probably had 70 or so in my office in New York reporting to me, and it is a sort of a similar mindset. It's delegation, it's sort of having vision, it's being able to follow up and and manage, even though now for me it's more AI than people. It's just you look, it's obviously very different, but I think some of the fundamentals are the same. Like how I think about shipping and sort of how to grow and things like that. >> Well, Josh, I want to go ahead and take it back. Back to the idea itself. How did you decide to build a note taker? It's got to be one of the more crowded categories right now, and I'm just wondering what was going through your head at that time. >> Yeah, I mean, it is crowded now. So, if you sort of think of there was Otter and things like that that would transcribe. So, take the audio and make text. There was no OpenAI API to summarize text until early 2023. So, it is there's a lot of apps that do it now. When I launched Wave initially, there there probably were close to zero other ones doing it. So, now it is crowded, but the competition I think reflects that the market is there. There's just there's a lot of business. There's a lot of hours to be recorded, you know, 15,000 a day sounds like a lot, but think there are billions of hours a day that could be recorded. So, I think the market is pretty big. Then as I think we'll probably talk about, this is not VC backed, so the sort of goal and sort of the whole framing is a little bit different, but it is crowded now. I think probably some of the early success I had in the 2024 time frame and then going on things like this and saying, "This is my ARR graph." and showing up into the right thing probably helped to attract other operators and and investors into the space, but that's okay. Like I said, there's sort of a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of flavors of it. But but really summarizing audio text would has only been possible for about 3 years. So, it is crowded now, but it wasn't when I started and that kind of head start has been pretty helpful. >> Got to be affirming to see so many people jumping on, you know, text summary, audio summary, uh just to reaffirm that yes, your app does indeed have merit and demand. >> Yeah, and for me I think yeah, it's not like a mind-blowing idea. A lot of it is in the execution and support like recording audio on your mobile device across the iOS and Android ecosystem is like can be kind of hairy and I think supporting that, my audience is probably not the most tech-savvy. I'd argue that probably many like very very few of them will be listening. You know, it's a it's a big world out there. Um and so getting it right, supporting that experience, listening to feedback, doing updates fast, those sort of things help me win. >> There's a lot of apps right now being shipped to the App Store. People think that our market is quite saturated. You even said it yourself that your category is seeing more saturation. If you were to enter the note-taking space at this point in time, do you think that there'd still be room for a new app? >> I think the word saturation might not be the right word cuz it sort of implies a slowing down or it is completing like there's it's all filled up, but that's not really the case. Like it's, you know, it's still I'd say probably across the like AI note-taker, that space is growing really really fast. Like I don't think it's near saturation yet. I think it's still pretty early, to be honest. But yeah, like it makes me nervous. There's a lot of players. There's a lot of competition. But like with all things, you know, there are more apps. There aren't more good apps. There aren't more the best apps. So, I think like yes, it is easier than ever to make an app. It's easier to launch an app. We've all seen data that shows how fast apps are growing. Like the AI productivity space though, feels like there's a lot of room to grow still. So, anyone listening, please come compete with me. >> There you go. He wants you to compete with him. But anyways, I think that actually segues into a topic that I'm personally really interested in diving into, which is building an app as a solopreneur with AI. You've been doing this whole thing by yourself. What was the first thing that you built with AI that made you think, "Yeah, I can actually build this app and and grow it?" >> Now it's like you literally type in a box what you want and the AI is like, "Here it is." You can You can remember though that it wasn't like that. It was a chat GPT window with GPT-3 or 3.5, and you'd say like, you'd have to break it down into small units. It wasn't sort of ingrained inside the IDE. It wasn't the like models were way, way dumber. So, you know, it was a little bit different at the time. But when you can like impress yourself with the thing you make, that makes it exciting to go forward. >> Can you walk us through how you, you know, use AI in terms of supporting the core functions of your app? >> Sure. Well, I mean, it's a digital product with an increasing surface area. I think I said before, it's mobile, web, and desktop. Users have a lot of ideas. I have a feedback site, feedback.wave.co, where people put in and vote for ideas. And so, on a given a given week, I might I might ask my AI like go look at the feedback site and let's do those things or maybe I'll be doing support and I will notice that a couple people are saying the same thing that sounds weird and so I'll have to dig into that and uh fix those bugs and you know it's sort of like I talk to AI for a living now. It It hasn't always been that way but now the core interface for me as the business owner is just like a quad code window with 50 tabs. I mean that's sort of that's sort of what the job reduces to now because you can sort of do almost anything from there. I built a customer service apparatus that sits on top of Intercom and each ticket comes in if it's like an out of office response to an email I sent it'll just shut it down. It's basic it'll read my help docs and try to answer it. If it's more difficult it might go up a notch on like model that it's using it might go from Sonnet to Fable and dig into like G Cloud logs and try to figure out what the problem is and just sort of like escalate itself until it's self-sufficient. I think I want to spend full-time on this. I am all in and I work very very hard on it but I want AI to do as much as possible so that the things I do can be kind of more abstracted away. The job kind of changes over time. That's sort of where it's at now. I've been focused on support a lot lately. >> I'll actually want to dive deeper into that. So AI support has been something that we've seen get varying responses. Do you feel like with AI customer support it's just as good could be as good if not better than maybe a human? >> I think until very very recently. I mean so like it's all about what information the responding AI has access to. Right? If the user is like yo I did this in the app and this happened. If the responding AI just has the help docs, it's going to be like, "Well, here's a general solution." If it has access to you you as the user if it has if the support bot can see all the analytics on your account, all the buttons you pushed in the app, all the emails you've received, what version of which app you're on, what you recorded recently, what those files look like. I mean, if it can really see the whole universe of things about you and about your experience, then it can be it can be insanely good. And so, I think what I sort of came to the realization is that I was not going to be able to build that into a third party's system. It's going to have to be something that I make. So, I use Intercom for the like UI experience for the users so that there's like a chat bubble that opens in the app and they chat with it. But after that, everything sits on a thing that I built that is actually living on a computer here that's always on and it's receiving the ticket, it tries to answer it, and then it's proposing the answer. It's not really auto sending for most things that I'm still touching everything. But it just sort of like AI support can be superhuman and amazing and perfect. It can be perfect. But in almost every case that you experience it right now, it's not. It's it's bad. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. It's complicated. But there's sort of all these things that as a one-man show, I can just streamline it, take it all the way. And if like you're granola or you're a company that's that's like raised $100 million and you have 500 staff, I'm going to outpace you because there's only I I don't have to just so much is lost with a lot of people. So, I kind of like I'm kind of pumped about competing with all these guys, these big teams. Let's go. What's up, everyone? Thanks for getting this far into the episode. One thing that we're really excited about is having Josh here because he's been a long-time customer of Adapti. Adapti has been shipping major, major updates for app builders to make money. So, that includes everything across the user acquisition, conversion, and other tools that you might need such as early payouts. And one of those features is called flow and paywall builder and allows you to build any onboarding, any flow, any paywall directly within this tool using cloud code, and ship them immediately with no waiting period. Now, import screens through Figma, build with AI, tons of different options for you. So, use tools like our flow and paywall builder, track all the different monetization events occurring in your app alongside other attribution tools that can help overall make your app rich. Feel free to check out our website at adapti.io, and let's get back to the episode. We talked about customer support, an area that is coming up as the hot hottest, probably the hottest topic in the mobile space, is distribution. How you do it as a one-man team? >> I'd say it's probably my weakest area. You know, we spend a bunch of money, we I what I mean is is I, you know, I spend a bunch of money on Apple, Google, and Meta for sort of different things, but and it performs okay. I have AI-ified a lot of that. I mean, I don't go into the UIs for any of those things. They're all kind of tied into a Claude for me. So, they'll like So, as an example, on Meta, we're putting up new ads every day, but it's all automated. I have a thing that goes on my computer, and it kind of looks at yesterday's ads and sees, you know, it's tried some new I It has like the workers that always work that are up there for a while, but then they're sort of like like an experimentation bucket where it'll create some image ads, drop them in there, see what happens. And like I think the return on that it it's a space that needs some human guidance, and it's just not something that I really enjoy that much. So, but I spend a bunch of money, I get a good return on it. It could be a lot better. It's a slow burn, but it kind of works. But totally abstracted. Like I'm not in those UI's at all. And I think probably the more interesting part of that apparatus is my web app. So, you know, you can go to wave.co. It's the website. Depending on the device you're viewing it from, it might drive you towards the app store, or it might drive you towards a more web experience to get the like desktop app or the answer that. But doing the like Google ads for websites is like a much more complicated and kind of interesting thing, whereas like app ads are kind of just like there's one way in the door, if you know what I mean. And attribution is a little tricky on iOS. So, I do a bunch of things. I spend a lot of money on it. Not too much. But, you know, it works. It's my least favorite part of the whole thing. >> Do you do any organic channels as well? Or this is like >> Yeah, I mean, we do a lot I don't do the like people posting organic videos. That has not worked for me. I don't think my audience I don't think that's my audience. I skew a little bit older. But also because that's just like a fierce game. It's a fierce game. And I have been able to kind of make it work without doing that so much. But yeah, I mean, everyone does that. I've tried it a few times. It It hasn't really worked. Every video is Every video is the same. It's just I did it badly. Is probably what it is. >> But overall, it seems like a lot of this marketing system is automated. What does that AI tool stack look like for you? >> It's all claw code. I got to tell you, model release day model release day is like you go to the office and all of the sudden all your colleagues are a little bit smarter. And it's the weirdest thing. It's the weirdest thing. And that still kind of happens, but it used to be more pronounced like Opus 4.5 is like everyone I worked with overnight became a genius. Yeah, this like a year ago. I mean, that's really the experience. Really, really far out. And so, it's like the sort of operation just gets a little more sophisticated every time the Frontier Labs come out with something better. But with ads, like, you know, to be good at Google Ads, like, I'm 44. So, I've been at this a bit. I've been in companies where you'd have a full-time guy who would do the like Google Ads or two or three full-time guys. And just gets sort of degree of the like going down to keyword level. It's just like you can't do it. You can't compete with the machine. So, all so many of these tasks were like humans pretending to be computers. And now you just have computers being computers. >> Streamlined a lot of the operations with AI. Now, something that can't exactly be fully streamlined with AI, but you know, cuz you need people coming through the funnel. App growth features and tests, and I'm sure you've had a lot of human input on that. Any tests that come to mind that paved the way for Wave? >> Not. I do less than I should. I mean, the like way I merchandise now, I cut the prices recently. Like, I can afford to do that by myself. This should be Tech should make things less expensive generally. So, I feel like as time goes on, the models are getting cheaper for what they do. I can charge less money. But I've tested different rates and different kind of, you know, what I'm offering alongside an annual trial. Some of those things have been unintuitive. So, I do some AB testing on paywall stuff with with Adapti, which is very useful. Um but I find that sometimes like the tests don't bear huge differences. Like, it's all sort of close together, like weaving in and out of the the margin of error. So, it's sort of like taste and instinct is very is still very important. >> When it comes to making the tests in general, is that something that you're thinking of? Do you have any recommendations you test to make? What's your process with that? >> To be perfectly honest, it's an area that I'm a little light in. I'm a little light. I wish I had a lot of tests happening. Like I did an email subject line test. It's like this one is 1% better. It's like, yeah, but like that we're still in the margin. So, I haven't had any crazy like it sort of plays into a more general philosophy that I have, which is that like can't fake being good. You can do some things on the margin. But at the end of the day like at scale, you can't test your way or figure way into success. Like your thing has to work. It has to be a product that people find valuable that they're willing to pay for consistently. And if you are winning if too much of that is because of like growth hacky stuff. And again, those are you should do that. You should you should maximize the opportunity. But I have tried to focus more on just being like a rock solid reliable experienced for people because I think just doing that can set you apart. I mean, this is not a brag, but and and on support you know, on support I often get like I tried them all and yours is the best. And I'd like to think that it's just like a maniacal focus on product. It's a utility. Like it's not a world changing thing. It's using technologies that are available. It is not a like incredible idea. It's just like a very I feel like apps are solid executions of simple ideas. And that is kind of what it is. And I feel like the whole internet is set up to elevate things like that. Like just good quality things. >> Was there any point in your journey that that philosophy got ingrained in you versus okay, I'm going to try all these growth hacky things versus you know, what the product is first and foremost. This is what matters. I mean, I think I've always naturally been worried about competitors just as a concept. And I think it at Uber we had a lot of that. Like you're only as good as the last ride you give someone. Like if, you know, Lyft or all the competitors we beat along the way that now you would not have even heard of, if they delivered a better thing, then they'd have been Uber. Like it was it wasn't just like what a great idea, the rest will work itself out. It's more like a good a consistently good execution on the idea. And so, I don't know, I think that's it. Like, I'm the guy who make I'm the owner the guy who makes that and I answer every chat that comes through the thing. It's like someone's like, why should I use you and not and not X? And it's like, because you're talking to me. That's why. Go chat their support and see if see if the owner chats you back. It's cuz my my my whole frame on this is different, I think, than what tech Uber at the time was the fastest growing venture-backed startup of all time, and I was running the biggest city. And so, like, but that's just a totally different framing. That's a different game. >> I love the philosophy. It just goes to show that, you know what? I think you could tell, right? Like Josh, that you have a lot of confidence and it comes with wearing all the hats, being up and close with the work. So, I mean, I could feel it from you know, across the screen. >> Cuz we're in the same city. That's why you feel it. >> New York or nowhere, baby. >> That's right. >> For someone that is looking for advice when it comes to onboarding paywall, I'm going to go ahead and make the assumption that you would say focus on the product first and then the onboarding and paywall will do some uh damage on the back. >> Well, yeah. I'm But I think someone being willing to give you money is a very good indicator. You want to know pretty quickly if you're doing something that someone will give you money for. Not your mom or your best friend, but like some stranger on the internet. Because and you should get to that early. You know, I'm a freemium, like 30 minutes free to try it out and then subscribe, but I learned very quickly I had an e-commerce background, like Uber was Uber, but also I did a lot of e-com before that, so like selling widgets over the internet. I hadn't really done app subscriptions before, but I I learned quickly that sort of the custom in app land is the annual is the trial and is the hard paywall. Or not like hard paywall, but like the more paywalls you show, the more sales you'll get. Like that's basically the thing. Like every person who comes through should see one. They should see one every time. You might want to not let them use your thing at all until they pay. Mine doesn't actually work that way. You can use it without paying, but I show it fast and it waits 3 seconds before the X shows up. So I think a lot of people do buy it before they, you know, they like buy it before they try it. But there's just like a lot of industry knowledge about things like that that I kind of learned in the Adapty world. So I do actually think that getting a paywall situation in place and you don't really want to mess with like StoreKit or, you know, Google or anything like that. So you definitely want to have someone like Adapty in the mix on that. And I think it's a really good, you know, your thing isn't real until someone has paid you for it, period. Full stop. So it's worth pushing that sooner than later. >> When the first person paid for Wave, was that a big moment? >> Yeah, dude. I was pumped. I was like this must be someone I know. It's but it's not but it wasn't it but it wasn't. It's funny because I think annual, unless it's an amazing deal, buying annual doesn't really make sense to me. It's my bread and butter. It's where most of the money comes from, but I would never buy annual of anything because I don't know what I'm going to like in a year. But that's the app but the App Store way is is annual. That's what people buy, so just goes to show you. You do have to sort of learn from data on this stuff, I guess. >> And I want to harp on some of the strategy really quick. So you said your app is freemium. Why? >> Because I think it's really awesome and so I want people to try it, even if they're like, "Oh, I don't want to pay." I want them to try it. Uh you know, because it's awesome. So, I don't know. I guess maybe it's cuz I'm old, like freemium was sort of the thing. I don't know. Like trials are the thing, and so I guess we have both. But the free 30 minutes, like I'm happy. I don't know. I just sort of also like to be able to say it's free. Like it can be. If you have one meeting a month, use Wave for free forever. It's great. I don't care. So, I want people to know that. Also, I don't want them to be like, "Oh, I don't want to pay. I guess I won't try." Like it kind of blows my mind that only half of installs ever actually record their first recording. You know what I mean? Like that's There's work to be done there. It's cuz I have an account blocker because because the app is mobile, desktop, and web, I want you to have a user account before you do anything. And so, that that pushes a lot of people away. >> And you mentioned earlier about competitors entering the space and you being wary of that. Do any you know, competitors, whether that's Apple building out call recording and transcription or any other players, does that influence your strategy? >> No, I mean I know I'm supposed to be I know I'm supposed to be worried about that. And you would kind of think that like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google or Apple would come up with something that makes Wave's functionality just like free on their device. You would think that that that that would happen. I have a few theories why it hasn't and is unlikely to, but I think even if it does, like there's a bell and whistle component. I do it in a more specific way. I just I don't know. I don't know. I'm not that worried. I'm not that worried. Plus, like the market is big, and I'm not going to win I'm not trying to win the whole market. There's no like network effect that I'm going for. I'm not trying to be a hundred million ARR. Like that's just not the goal. You know, it sort of remind because there's that there's such a focus on that in tech. It's like if I like to play basketball, like I go to the park and I play basketball. I go to the gym, I shoot around with my friends. You never be like, well, do you want to be on the Knicks? It's like, no, I'm not going to be on the Knicks. But that's so often the way tech startups are sort of presented, like, well, are you raising venture? Like if you're raising venture, that means you're trying to be worth a billion or billions of dollars. Like this is an meeting note taker app. Why would I want to do that? Like why would I want to do the unnatural things one would have to do to make a billion-dollar AI note taker app? So you'd have to ask Granola that and all those guys. Like I don't really understand the thinking there, but >> When did you internally decide this is going to be my benchmark for success? I don't need to be on the Knicks. That doesn't mean I can't still hoop. >> Yeah, I mean, the goal of the business is to make money and I have a pretty high burn, so I want it to cover that and, you know, and then some. And I've been successful at that. And so I feel like if you're earning more than you're burning, then you're doing all right. I sort of think people think like, oh, high-tech, high-tech startup. I think it's more like, I am a shopkeeper. I run a store. I sell inference in a modest size, but it's just me and I'm the guy behind the cash register and I'm sweeping it out at the end of the night cuz it's my small business and like America was built on those. So I sort of feel like um it's just a it's just a whole different frame. >> Is that why you decided to not raise money? Cuz I feel like a lot of your philosophy isn't necessarily, oh man, I'm going to build a billion-dollar business, but even back to your idiom, right? Like you're running a storefront. >> Yeah. >> Make me a millionaire. >> like I feel like I was lucky enough to be part of a successful venture-backed thing before and that's it's great and when it works, it's super great, but you know, you're sort of doing something that's focused on a future event of like, a you know a liquidity event of when we go public or get acquired and sort of the whole thing is focused on that. Instead like I make a product and every month I get a check from Apple and that was today as anyone who makes an app would know. And so it's like it's just a business just a regular old business. I don't have investors it's just me. It's just like more normal. >> Do you ever have plans to hire or is your next hire going to be uh the new frontier model? >> Yeah no absolutely no plans. I mean like maybe my kids are something but I have no the transaction cost and friction and headache of another person um is not really necessary. >> So many app founders dream of being in a position where they can run a one-man business and a lot of the core ops are automated. If someone wants to build a one-person company what advice would you give them? >> Well I'd say just start. So I've been a benefit you know at Uber I was the beneficiary of riding riding a mega trend of like mobile and GPS and things like this like location-based services in that moment in time and I find myself now 10 years later riding a you know a different kind of thing like the AI productivity. There is a an explosive opportunity in taking these brains these AI brains and just the like model and connecting it to workflows and other ways for people to like normal folks to derive value from it. Like that's a big opportunity. And you have to get it Yeah I mean that's the opportunity to sit between people and the models. And some of that will be done by the model companies themselves but a lot of it won't be. And so I think figuring that out is a huge opportunity. Yeah like I think AI's an obvious place to be that is a growing segment leveraging AI in new and interesting ways. It's easier than ever it's harder than ever. >> What is the first thing that someone should try and delegate off their plate as quick as possible? >> That's a tough one. I think there is I would look at my day and say what are areas of my day that I can compress? I a stupid example, like I just get tons of email and some including now just like outputs of systems I built for Wave like update emails to myself. Just tons of it. So I built um a sort of layer over Gmail that just very quickly with what it knows about me buckets the emails into things that I shouldn't read, that I should skim, and that I should read carefully. And I know Google probably has this idea already, but it's an example of like building software for yourself or for small groups of people. Like the coolest stuff I've built for Wave is stuff that users will never see. It's the It's the business I built around me to take tasks that used to take me X hours that now take me a small fraction of that. And so I think it's sort of looking at your day and say like where What are the areas that I could just cut down? That I could reduce from 6 hours to 6 minutes. Like that's the leverage. And I don't like people sometimes over index on it. Like I have agents running all night. Like at the end of the day, someone smart said it's like not end-to-end work. Like humans are at the at the end of the day like humans are at the beginning and end of every AI task. And so you can't like you can build yourself into a corner. Like you've built so much stuff you forget what you built and it's runs out of control. But there are just more measured ways of building things for yourself and for your business that can just be like just dramatically impactful. Like I said, the cool the stuff I'm that I'm most excited about are things you'll never see because they're just for me to run the business. >> Is there anything that you think someone should do manually a good amount of times and get good at before they automate. >> Well, and I took this idea from Uber. They made {slash} we made us like full-time employees do driver and rider support for many, many years beyond when you think we would have done that. I think the idea there was to stay at very close to the customer. You know, there was always an opportunity to kind of outsource like let's send the support to a BPO or like you know, like some kind of offshore support. That was the conversation then where as now it's like give it to AI. But we didn't do that for very long because it helps to have the actual users banging on you directly. So I have done some I'm still touching every support, you know, email and chat that comes in and there's maybe it's 50 to 100 a day or something. Like I'm doing them all still. I have increased AI support and a few things now auto send. But it's very, very helpful to talk to people actually using your thing because it quickly becomes other people know it better than you because they're in it every day. And so I just think talking to users like it's a cliche, but it's still true. Just talk to users. They have all the answers ultimately. Like they know what they want and you're serving them. >> Just goes back to right like at the end of the day apps are just a business. You still need to get close to the customer. Your app needs to provide value. Simple things, but perhaps in the internet sphere of things sometimes that gets lost. >> Totally. Rapid fire, Josh. >> Most overrated AI tool. >> I mean So long answer. You have to intermediate the AI model just the right amount. Too little and the user doesn't know what the hell's going on. Too much and you become redundant and not the best solution. I was always kind of bearish on light I mean I'm a model wrapper, I guess, but I'm like for some reason just the right kind. I've I've found that sometimes there's like too much wrapping. Like I never really understood categories like the Replit's and Lovable's of the world. Like I know they're huge, but I don't know how sticky that revenue is. Cuz you're really just so like the model is really doing the heavy lifting there. So that's sort of I don't really get I don't I guess. I don't know. I don't want to like on anyone, but that's just that's kind of where I'm at. >> Oh, this one you don't have to on them. You can hype them up. What's the most underrated? >> Claude code, running things in the terminal is scary to normals, but it's such a better way. The terminal is underrated. Because it's just similar it's it's what I said earlier. It's like just closer to where everything is. Like your terminal on your Mac is the the doorway to the world of your computer. Like everything is there. So it's just better than a like graphically user interface for that reason. It feels more pure. I don't know. That's just how I think about it. >> And you got to dive in and not use the actual Claude app. You got to use the terminal. >> Yeah, you you got to use the terminal. >> What's something about running a one-person company that no one talks about, but you feel like you need to let them know. >> Yeah, hell yeah, I will I'll take that opportunity. When you're one person, I find that in business there's a lot of time-wasting ritual. The get-to-know-you phone calls, conferences, networking events, dinners. Like all very nice. They add a little bit of like randomness to your day and good things come when that happens. But I don't miss the like 10 minutes before a call being canceled on. Like "Oh, so-and-so is is stuck." Like his EA writes to me. Like you know, they'll get back to you to reschedule. All that sort of nonsense. There's like you sort of forget when you're when you when you kind of like exit that for a little while and then you re-emerge into it, it it's stands out as even more strange because it's just like it's such a waste of time. So, there's just all these like wasteful time rituals of the human business world that I don't miss. >> Honestly, it's what a blessing to not have to >> >> 10 minutes before Oh my gosh, I got to prepare for >> to me yesterday. It was like an intro I didn't even really want to take. It was like a VC type just to like say hi. I'm not like really And then like I kind of built the day around it. It was a you know, it was an 11:00 and at 10:53 I saw that the schedule had been changed to rescheduling in parentheses so that I'd see it, which I appreciate. But it's just like, I don't know. I hate that. I've done it, too. I do I I have done that, too, and I hate it. I hate it on both sides. >> You like when you see too many of those on your day, it's like you start to feel kind of queasy inside. You're like, "Ugh." >> Yeah, it's just like it's true what they say like productive time is very different than meeting time. Like you're doing At the end of the day, the real work is most typically done alone. Not when you're chatting with someone else. >> Speaking of the real work, what's next for Wave? >> So, I like to because AI makes everything so easy, the product sort of aspirations are to do things that are a little bit less easy. So, as an example of that, well, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag on like a new product thing. But I'm just trying to make it more and more useful to users. You know, people are have grown pretty substantial recording libraries. I have some features that are actively being worked on, but are also kind of live of letting you kind of chat across all those features. Like, "What did I say to Freddy that time?" And it sort of is like searching through my 5,000, you know, like sessions to find who is Freddy and kind of learn about that and then go and do all of that. And so, they're sort of like the I think in a in a a broader way to look at it is sort of Wave operates in two ways. One is the capturing audio from wherever it is generated, mobile, desktop, web, phone call, Zoom meeting, whatever. Capturing it and effectively giving you a summary. And then the second half is like where it lets you send that data and what you can do with it. Like how follow-up works, how sharing works, where the data can land, what comes next, how it gets smarter over time. If I'm meeting you, Freddy, every single week at 2:00, is there not an opportunity for the for Wave to ping me right before I meet with you with all my follow-ups based on the other meetings? Like there's all this good knowledge, so the next step is like what do you do with it? Thinking about that. I also am addicted to providing a connection to the phone, like literal phone calls. It's sort of been a There is some phone support. You can make a phone call through the Wave app. I'm working on something where maybe you can set up a dedicated phone number in the Wave app for both inbound and outbound. Like stuff like that that's sort of bleeding edge of like what's easy to do versus takes some effort to try to stay ahead. >> Exciting. And for you especially, I mean it must be good to be in builder mode, not in a meeting mode. >> It's good to be in builder mode and not meeting mode. There's never enough time in the day. It's very easy to get carried away. But, you know, it's a good time. >> You dropped a bunch of knowledge when it comes to your app, how you've gone about automating things. You gave out some advice. But at at its core, everybody wants to know, of course, the classic, the age-old, if you had one piece of advice for a solo app founder, what would it be? >> I felt like I had never done the zero-to-one thing. I'd done a lot of one-to-n. What I mean by that is I joined companies that were already established, even very early, even if I'm like employee five or seven or 10 or 20. I think at Uber I was like 30. Like I'm coming in early before there's a lot of stuff, but I would I had never been there for the spark, for the kind of zero to one moment. And I think I had convinced myself that I wasn't the type of person to do that, that I couldn't really do that. And it turns out it's just just you just do it. Like it's not actually that big of a deal. You just kind of just do it. And so, I think I'm sort of happy with how my work life has gone and so I don't have any like old big like regrets, but I think taking the zero to one jump maybe just a little bit sooner probably would have been the right thing. >> Like a lot of folks we want to. And it's just a matter of getting the courage. So, Josh commendable for you for leaving, you know, a nice stable job behind to risk it and obviously see the the fruits of your labor. >> It's a blessing and it's been really fun. >> Where can they find you, Josh? >> On X @JoshMohr, j o s h m o h r e r. You might wonder, how does Wave know how to spell your crazy last name? It has custom vocabulary as a setting so you can enter proper nouns and things like this that might come up a lot in discussion and it'll correct the spelling. On Twitter, uh you know, that's probably the best way. Or uh Josh@wave.co. That's it. >> Josh is definitely the definition of an app leader and we're super proud to have him as a customer. Josh, thank you once again for your time and go check out the Wave AI app. >> Thank you. I love Adapty. You should all use Adapty. It was more developer-friendly and it still is. It's React Native-friendly. When I came on, they were the only ones doing that. They're the best and they really listen. I bang on them all the time and I get all the things I want. So, you should do that, too. >> Well, we'll see you guys on the next App Leaders podcast episode. This is Josh Mohr and we'll see you soon. >> Thank you.