#268 – Trading Stocks, Quitting Amazon, and Making $20k/Month with Yahia Bakour of Stock Alarm
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Alright, we surprising introduced you. You are yahia Baker, the founder of stock ARM and my prancing that right?

Yes, about you .

are um your super Young? I think what's inspirational about you was the fact that you are only twenty three years old, even working on stock alarm for three years now. You started this when you're twenty or one thousand and and college, and you just recently quit your job.

You're softening your amazon. You're making two hundred and fifty grand a year and you're taken the leap to work full time on stock alarm, which is making twenty grand a months, and you killed in IT there too. I think that's pretty great to hear in any hacker succeeding so wildly at your age, and it's pretty inspirational to see. So welcome to the forecast.

Thank thank you know, I was doing at twenty years old, I was going to bars with a fake I D. I was trying to seem like I actually knew how to order. So like i'd go there and there be like some cute girl and like I would stand and like the bar tender won't see makes us too short nails like to IT and yet you're like twenty years old like run in a business making making grants like making business decisions. I'm happy and and have friends like you who made me feel like shit.

I tried to have baLance. Actually I think my idea was taken somewhere in jersey, so not too far off. But yeah so let's .

think about your product socket alarm. I'll try to describe IT. Yeah you tell me if I am getting this right, let's say that I am trading stocks.

Obviously, that can be really time consuming to do, especially like a day today or something. I might be watching ten or twenty different stocks, and I want to buy and sell them at different Prices. And so i'm just watching and clicking refresh on the page over and over over again all day.

So I know when to buy and sell, enter stock alarm, know that process is a huge way to the time, but if I downadup a APP I set up for your website, then suddenly I can seat alerts. I can tell stocks alarm, hey, notify me when this dock hits this Price now and then I can buy or sell IT and I no longer having to do all this manual checking myself from just getting automatic notifications via email or a phone call or a text message. And now I can just go buy stocks and not have to do this whole sort of time consuming process. And so that I think is the main benefit as I underrated stock.

if that's pretty at the whole point of IT, was to avoid that feeling of, you know, you're watching tesla or whatever volta well, street, but stock was going on is popular at the time. You're watching IT for a while. You stop watching your last love that was maybe I should buy some right then later on you're like old Spiked by you know, ten percent. But if you had bought a call option.

you would make a time yeah I get that exact feeling like maybe I should have bought to them whenever ver, whenever I see the Price Spike, but not when I see IT for. So have a retroactive history in my mind like I totally, I totally knew this is gonna en and I won't bought if I just thought about IT in fun story.

Actually, I was not the original founder on this. I actually joined the party pretty late 啊。

Okay, when did you join?

So I joined sock alarm when there was that he was under one hundred books, mr. R, and especially three, four hundred and monthly active users um the sorry how I joined this pretty fun love the coal founders and where they are now I think corner you might have talked to one of them few weeks rude. He was working on a content moderation platform.

The other one, Morgan, he recently got a full time job. He had a period of one year, which he was going full time on socker. They are expired. We didn't hit the M, R, that you would have wanted to stay on. So if he just want back.

okay, so yeah, give me the, give me the the run down. You started a alarm, I think, in twenty nineteen. Was that when you joined? Or is that when the first to two co .

founder started IT? So I joined, I think he was a few months after essentially what that happened is, you know I was senior of college. Find the jobs you know you're try to get things that um and I stumbled across the lincoln post for Morgan, which had been going kind of over a couple thousand likes he had written, hey, I started the stock market a learning APP check IT out been working on this for a while exit room so I opened IT and my first thought was this would be great if IT worked right like I was broken a lot away so like, hey, I would actually pay the five box month for this if only I had these features because of the time I had my own kind of set up right I thought I was doing well.

Options wasn't actually um but that he was fun so went to head sent to millish suggestions on like K I have a spread sheet where key Prices updated and actually trying to build and like so alarm, please add these features right? One thing like to another, we have time to call their like cake. Do I joined for the early on? Gene, grow this thing? No, we can come copters so sentient that's happened in grid for a period one year. I think by the end of the year, we are trilling up. T, M, R, R.

I love that is like, in a way, your story is like the way that I ended up as one of the founding members of this product is I noticed what was wrong with IT, and I kind of like politely shared on IT in certain ways. Like, here's what would make your APP good. IT kind of reminds me of when tech companies like for like hackers to hack and and like show security vulnerabilities, and then they end up bringing on those hackers to run the security team and like kind of show them how to do IT in a Better way.

I've never hired anybody who's complained about my apps, but I become good friends with people who have. While Julian has been on the podcast a few times, message me in the early days of any actions. Okay, you're site, it's cool and all.

But like here's like fifteen things that you could be doing Better than are wrong with IT. And I think when you're an early stage founder, like that kind of feedback is extremely appreciated. Like you usually, you're just kind of like and a bubble where nobody's talking to you and nobody cares. So if somebody y's like taking this time to go through and pointed out all the things that could be Better, the thing and like maybe should talk to this person or hire them.

and I think of the time they have full time jobs, are trying facebook. I was in senior of college, which, yes, second, nick, I have things to do, but not really right. So yeah, I had a bunch very time to work.

a lot of beer pong to play, homework to do, not much else.

I mean, for you to give them suggestions on how they could make this Better. I mean, that sounds like, I mean, that sounds like good to said you you thought about how you would do the the same way. So I would assume that you were stop trading already.

You had like what was your background with trading? Like how long? How do you even get end of stocks on?

I really like to read books in college, so I read a bunch of of no trading books as well stuffed derivative, one of my fair book actually and walk down wall street like it's they're really simple books to read, but introduce to all the lingo, all the concepts. And also is that was perfect for a target market, right, which is mostly retail traders as well as you know professional traders that just want to really easy U I to use compliment whatever they're doing.

They i'm going to have to say, like in this in this situation, I actually don't know hardly anything about stock trading even to this day, right? Like you are nursing out at age twenty and I am thirty five and like i've got like Robin hood, I think i've got some coin locked up in one of these apps. Like I bought them because I was quite supposed to I never looked to you. I don't open those apps so i'm really kind of like use you in this interview at least if nothing else like I I did figure out like books and soft y but i'm going to keep mining you for information so i'm taking notes yeah what .

are your recommendations you said ran and walk down. walk. What else have you like red to like, learn more about trading and what would be advised to somebody who's like, sort of a new black you are at some point?

I mean, I wouldn't say i'm necessarily I think the senate advice of index funds and don't trade applies to that people, right? There was that one study of, like I wasn't a study, was this famous article about how monkey picked out land of socks and have performed Better than, you know, a bunch of metal.

Fun manager is what not? So I think trying to actively trade is not usually the move but you know if what most people tend to do um especially you know tech people that I was working with this, they would have fun money, right? So they be like, hey, this is money I would spend going to vegas instead, i'm going to spend IT at home trading options, right?

So they say, okay, I have this much money i'm going to spend on trading and then usually that's also part of who are users are right? Is there like, hey, if I am spit trading with five thousand doors, I don't mind spending five box in months on this up to actually keeping on top everything so I don't class. You're going to work ever.

I'd like that point of view. Basically this is fun money. But on the left side of that, like you have to understand, like your personality type pic, are you an addictive gambler, right? Is this fund money going to suddenly turn into like your rent money and sudenly turn into like your mortgage payment? Like I think a lot of people will done sari have that control. But if you do, I think that's a really good way to look at IT.

And those people that trade, you know unlike a monthly basis or or the rebounding for police is every six months rate, but they have so much money in there that you know it's still useful for them and not about like our target users, right? What we've learned from them, a lot of them, they only be a couple of trade of the year, but the volume is so large, that of money they put in so large that they're like, okay, I I need to be.

On top of this thing, right? And then in terms of what he should actually do, everybody have their own opinions, I think. But whatever making money.

he's probably the right one. Yeah, I know a lot of a lot of friends who are like you, low crypto traders, and they're just putting money into every single coin put in half and network into that making and losing millions of dollars and live in that kind of lifestyle. But I think that you're sort of right about the by the right move is not to be an active trader.

Like I remember when I was in college, I graduated to two thousand and nine. The two thousand eight was sort of like the financial crisis, just like the housing bubble bursting. And right after that, I started trading stocks, and I knew absolutely nothing about what I was doing.

So I was just stood in a lot of day trading, you know, just like buying and selling stocks ic, three or four times a day for months on end, because I was fun to do. And if I had just like held any of those stocks that I had bought and just not sold them and literally just done nothing like the easy, I going to just forgotten about him. What when the easiest domestic to do? And yet IT would have been the smartest and would have made way more money than all the buying and selling that they did. Just got a funny because that I probably wouldn't have needed stocker, I wouldn't needed to know any alerts. So we just would have completely forgot about IT set IT and forget IT and profited.

There is also like the whole like the whole hold link thing for yeah the community and I that specially that ality kind of is .

I don't see that as much as stock treaters, but I think it's for some reason very popular and encrypted.

So I mean, you knew you knew a bit about stock trading. You knew an off criticize and like poco um and like an actual start up for IT. But that start up was like a knew you said they only had only been around for a couple of months and you were looking for a job. So i'm kind of curious like why was that like an an option .

that why go to you? Why go work for a brook start up?

So here is a fun thing. I wasn't even trying to get into the start up space, like for some reason in my in my head to build a set up to the need to raise money and have this grand idea right like building saying that immediately held billions. I don't understand this concept.

Like the having where it's like, okay, you see a nh market where you know there's only the potential for to make a couple million, which is a lot of money, right? But the point is I didn't think that you could build a small product that kind of worked in that market and that could fund your lifestyle, right, which is what a lot of indie hackers do. So in my head I was like, okay, i'll give this guy suggestions.

I could use this APP and then i'll keep looking for a full time job, right? So my priority was getting into a big company, getting to amazon. And you know, I was working on socks line at the same.

And like, ow, i'd really like being this thing. It's fun to on. You can get recognition, right? People without the like.

Hey, I surprisingly, people, you kill very strongly about their money and things related to their money. So if you know socker m works the way it's supposed to, people get an alert. They leave really positive reviews.

If you check the up store, we have lake six thousand reviews of four point eight stars. And you know, some people are very angry, are very happy. But I think the nice part is people feel strongly about IT, something that was cool. And somewhere along the the line I was like, hey, what i'm doing them on is fun, but you know, it's getting old very quickly. So ARM, i'm night lon in the stockland at night and my main goal to time was so you get promoted them is on I did that ten months was like, OK, I feel nothing great, like I could gun for another promotion, or or could gun for more money, which I tried, did the whole divisive thing, but like, okay, what do I actually want to in my life? So stock alarm seems like very good option because no here was I had the sort of jam that you know could fund a in the hacking lifestyle and I could try to grow IT and no expanded beyond alerting and what the currently does.

Let's go to the the beginning though. So i'm curious about the like the transition that you made from early employee basically or maybe late cofounder to like founder like that's one of the most baller in my music possibly make like hey, you guys made this APP i'm just a part of the piano gallery and linked in telling you what you need to do like today you like I am the founders, talk alarm, quit my job running this. How does that happen?

So initially had happened by initially remark an did not really believe this thing would grow past A U K, M, R R. right? They were like, hey, if you you know managed to go in this point, i'll give you all this equity.

And later on, they told me they like they never actually would happen, right? With precious body. Yeah, yeah. I actually only meet them a year and a house after working. We hope we all to go trip to taaoa a company outside right. So a fourth but um yeah the way that happened was I joined on initially started trying all these growth tactics, started actually building up a product and what's not great great grid. And then once I got all the equity, I want, hey guys, lots to going on this but I live more until eventually I got to like cofounder that is nobody was cool with IT quality that's respectable or not yeah.

that makes lot of sense. I mean, in that sense, it's worth IT to them because they own equity in the company. And if you are making the company more valuable than like the value of their equity is going up.

And i'd read their own like forty percent of company that's like main twenty grand amount and somebody he's working on the full time, you know one hundred person of the company where i'm not even believing in the product really that much and don't i'm time to work on and and I don't have anyone else. So I think that's a smart move on there. Part of recognize that you had the ambition and the skills to like sort of take you to the next level.

But I also get like maybe why they didn't feel the way in the beginning. Like you said, you joined that. They had like a hundred. mr. r. It's not exactly a huge company.

I think that very first like phase or you're not no one's really using the APP and it's not that big and it's i'm making that much money. It's it's easy to be like this is never going to work like how could this ever get big? How do you get out of that first face? How do you like take something that's making one hundred and mr. And like find know your first real paying customers and in your first sort of growth ones and and build the right features?

I think what worked for a super well to be ending was trying to make super fans out of people so know they reach out that you like hate and you please build me this feature, right? No, Normally when someone reaches out to support asking for something, for some reason they are not expected to happen. Um especially for like bigger products, but for us, we're like, okay, got a request on monday.

It'll be built by wednesday. Write especially to new alert. Hey, can you create a tiger type based on our side or something? So we would get to work, build by length, the emails and back and suddenly, you know, they post by their views, they refer a bunch people. So initially, I just grew by a word of mouth from customers that we gave specific attention to when we did that for months on end. Because like paying customers tend to be friends with other paying customers.

I make the a sense like your sort of a unique ase, you're a software engineer and you have in growth and marketing, most software engineers are like only software engineers. They have no desire to do any of the growth stuff. Like I don't want to market. They don't want a message, anyone to send a cold email or like even really submit the rapp I product, they just want to code stuff. And so I think that the fact that you are looking at IT with the sort of growth head on makes a lot of sense for why you're able to break out of these early stage doldrums that is hard for a lot of early founders to break out of.

Think yeah. And then all the usual stuff like posting product on beat list sub date today, I think we went viral on them react js subway IT right which is not necessarily our market market because of the trading ones ban and you spend our self motion, but um we did that for a while. Um another thing we did, you look at a twitter like there's a boat there. I I wrote like ten lines of code three years ago and IT tweet still today tweet out the latest news for stocks on our platform as well as top upcoming earnings dividends to set. So like kind of reuses our infrastructure that we've already built up for um the product to you know help with growth.

I'm a sudden and like that early phase where clearly the other cofounder ers weren't that confident that this thing was going to be like a long term success early on. What was the point where some of these tactics that we're using to grow or working out, like when did IT legitimately become .

validated when we hit a few thousand over? Like, hey, this sexy is potential to grow, right? Because we gone to this point.

why? And his ten are I can. I had twenty.

So I think around that point, we are all still fooling time at the beginning, right? We are all still building and trying to figure out what to build by asking, you know, people who were paying, hey, why are you paying what you want? What else you want us to build and what not? But I only really got baldato once more people were paying for IT, and we saw that I could actually grow because with this type of thing ah, especially for retail traders, they they tend cycle in an out of trading during the year and when they and they're spending a bunch of money and when they are out, they cancel subscription and and say, hey, we're coming back later, right? So we needed to make sure that our turn RAID would say low enough that the business could actually grow and the amara would not be just be filing or. Decline time. I think there is like .

two types of people, maybe two types approaches to starting a company, and you're definitely doing the second. So the first approach is like what I call the master plan approach. You sit down from day one, get your blue pronounce like an evil, know, mad scientist, and you're like, this is what we're going to do.

And you have at all charted out, you know where are going to be in ten years? We're going to be in five years. We're going to be in one years.

You draw all way back to today and you have a master point and then you have the opposite, which is more of like a bottom up approach. We're like, what are we going to do today? You know, today i'm going to send these guys a message about how the APP is buggy.

Okay, now i'm here like today I we're onna use some metal in some marketing as asking is good right now. I we're here. We're making some money like we should try to make more money, right? And you just follow the path and you see where you are now when you see where you could get to you in the next step. And I think that second path, like that's not what I like to do because I like to be super meticulous place anybody. I think it's honestly the Better way to go because it's more motivational and you end up seeing more realistic opportunities.

Like a lot of your story at this point is you figuring out what to do next based on like where you are right now, which means you're always going to like have kind of a clear vision of where you can go and like maybe you'd a dead and right, maybe you get to some point and you follow the wrong path. You have to batch ack a little bit. But IT seems like that never really happened with you and you just been figuring that out one step of time.

yeah. I mean, in general, we try to have a long term plan of where this thing is going, like we want to, you know, build these additional features that all time and to an emergent theme that people are willing to pay. I do more for her sick around longer for but yeah they you know week by we uh month by months, we tend to be like, okay, this is the most important thing to work on right now and it'll help us.

okay. So you have a sort of a master plan you're saying is there there's an .

idea of where we're going there, but the day today was to do priorities and change prety fast, right?

Like what do you think is like the part of your master plan that has worked out the best the prediction that you've made of the strategy that you guys have had, that actually you've been able to make in to reality?

I think one thing that worked really well for us is keeping the APP really simple and making decisions on how to limit the APP, right? So hey, we're going to, we're going to have the most common R, S. I as an option for alerts.

But we're not going to have a million options, a million different time periods. What not make a really intuitive, user friendly. And you know, one of the abuse that really may be happy, right, was the sky reaching out is like, hey, i'm seventy, I love using your rap is really simple, right? Because you open up is a big button. It's like, hey, tesla, here's the soft ground. Here's a big button that is a alert, right?

You clack on IT can really mess IT up.

And that's something we iterated on a lot and something we try to keep up on a daily basis. Hey, cut the crap even if we wrote even if we built a feature that turns out that doesn't working um we just remove IT, right? So trying not to get attached.

So I think one of the things that's kind of impressive about your idea is that I saw you posting about unandi hackers. And then one of the responses was, doesn't this already exist? You there are already stock a learning apps and options.

And I had the same thought, right, like it's probably like there probably already are alternatives to this, right? I use Robin hood for the limited trading I do. I've never set an alarm, but like that probably is an alarm there. Um or for use like some other you know APP or something, they probably have alarms. But like what you're basically proving is that like the markets big, just because someone has done something doesn't mean have done IT well or doesn't mean you've done IT in the way that you're going to do IT. And if you have these sort of guiding principles that we're going to make a super duper simple like that's going to appeal to enough people that you can build a business out of IT despite the fact that other people have stock kert or stock alarms.

I remember I come and actually because I actually took a good twenty minutes to think that response like looking at alternatives. But I remember I one of the examples I used was, hey, google and the licks is a thing but you know, IT sucks you right? Like it's just plain too many options if you know the thing you want to find is very hard to find.

So now there's flaught ble right? Mean notions are pretty good example. But I think there's a lot of small startups that can just take one aspect of a bigger product and do IT really well, and which is what most people want out of that bigger product anyways. Yeah, I think that's .

kind of like the one of the bigger misconceptions about start up and business is in general, especially for people who are doing for the first time, is that you have to solve an unsolved problem, right?

If someone has already solved, if people are already getting at restaurants so you can't make another restaurant, if people are already staying in the hotels and airbnb bees, like it's solve of a problem, like you can't solve a problem that people already solved, but like it's actually not true at all. The vast majority of the biggest startup s in the world, even the newest startups are just solving a problem has already been solved. They're just doing IT in a new way.

The creativity comes not in the problem that you pick. The creativity comes in your solution to that problem, like what the ideas like the creativity comes like making IT, super nh, super specific and then super simple. And that allows you to solve the problems already being solved, but in a different way, and to reach a new group of customers, because I think growth is the hardest thing for the hackers.

Like the number one thing is building your APP or having an idea. But like that actually turns out to be like not that hard. People figure out how to hack together, even if they don't have a code.

But then once that to built people, will they go shit? I don't no one knows about IT. No one is using IT. No ones have no customers. We've no revenue um but it's been pretty smooth sAiling for you guys like getting to and you said you ve got to ten k after a year and revenue like that's pretty quick for an and actor.

And so I kind of want to walk through like some of the things that I worked for you from a growth perspective and just break them down so others can learn a bit about what you've learned. That's okay. So you mentioned I do marketing on forums and websites like reit and stuff. How does that work? What your playbook for marketing on .

internet forms? There's a few posts are actually on in the area about this that that say that pretty well. It's finding you know where your customers currently hang out and then going in hang out that area as well and then not clearly shilling your APP and spamming IT right.

But you know suggested that room in a while being like, hey, i'd built this full disclosure use IT right? One thing that that dress, actually quora really hate spam, right? But you just totally the front and all this about know the fact that you worked on this IT works very well.

So if you look up like what's stock what's the best stock late APP on quora right there? I remember crying that was sixty questions or something I check out every month or so. I just post answer like, k, try this disclosure.

I built this, you know. And then I think at one point I was getting like ten cave views on my answers per munch, right. And then left straight to our APP IT was a deeper link where IT play depending on your device, android or iphone or or you're a computer, right IT just goes to the correct client to its web. I was so um that was pretty well actually um just answering questions on quora strap red just I guess so what's .

what's the best stock? Lin APP, cora and the very first legg who will links to that question. Is there any APP to provide stocks? Lar, I see answer number one, you here because stock alarm sounds like a fit and you just want to talk about stock alarm. And then at the very like disclosure, I work on stock ARM and truly think it's one of the best out there. And I A lot of click on that, that makes sense.

Yeah you can see the number of views of the bottom. I hope that's one of the one that has quite a bit abused. Yeah, yeah.

So that works pretty well for us. Seo is huge, right? So static marketing websites, sock RAM di O U, just I was script. I put IT together and like a day, right?

What a temple swapped out all of the text and images during all the meta tags, um picked a few high picking keywords was pretty fault. Like one thing we did was pick a high and ten cut which was socked. Alert rate has pretty volume but people who click on that tend to um actually download APP. So you look up sockets on google where a number one ahead of like articles from shop and fidelity and what yeah how .

do you get to be number one because like you said, it's not high volume. It's not a tone of people searching for this, but like there's a lot of other companies who .

are writing about stocks, yeah, I think back linking work pretty well for us in a sense step. You know we we posted links on this from a bunch of the websites and reached out for people to actually like, hey, you know, well, right, you an article will just a link to back to here on and at some point can I take off for gally like the baLances, a few articles about you tools to help with the stock trading and they linked to us.

So we start getting links organically from people, which is great. Um another thing is you know trading content. We have a ton of blaws posts all around R I alerts or uh why you should set stock alerts for something or you know how income statement work was not.

So there all kind of around. The stock market and a socks financials and technicals and what not. Another thing is our web has you know think sport right now around forty thousand or see thousand assets check but is automatically close them.

So you know we have new web pages for those all the time. So when you look at tesla stocks large on google, the first ones from our web updos stock, I am that I O right. So that also helps out a lot. Seo was probably the biggest thing like just works in on that because I took a few months first to see any results from there. So that was nice.

Yeah, that's one of the things I think discourage is a lot of indy hackers from doing S O, especially if there in the ideation phase, like if you're just starting an APP and you're like, I don't know if this gna work and this doesn't work, I don't know, abandon and move on to something new, you know, next month. Then S O doesn't enter mucianus minds because IT takes months to like write these blog posts and create these pages and then get other people to link to them and then have them start rising up the ranks in google and like proof that they're onna do anything and generate any amount traffic or that traffic convert to like paying users. And I think a lot of people just don't have the patients of the time for that strategy, but that seems like you were just committed early on until .

you like why not IT just felt like something like get IT out the way early going to help eventually, ally, you can't for right? Like and how much time doesn't take to really out these .

articles rally the person who runs the stock, the stock alarm APP thinks about .

investing in su, yeah.

what IT seemed like a owin and I think we've quoted up over our I know we did this like last week, formed over our way up to next J, S, or more S, C, O games, right? We built a great react. That person that was not doing too hot.

One one thing I wanted slightly dig in to just because i'm completely unfamiliar with IT, and I know a lot of other people probably are too as like I know plenty about just like generic seo for a website. We've got a little bit for indie hackers, not nearly enough. We need to invest more.

But I read A A lot of your like search volume is coming to your IOS APP. So like what's the difference? Like what learnings have you have you come across that? Like, help you to rise in your search rank on APP stores is opposed to .

dislike your website. Your landing pages that know you can track your refers. Come on IOS for people who down of the APP. So I remembered very, very clear that went when I started.

There was just one page for stocking time that I O IT was maybe for use way back time machine, you can see that. But at the time, only five percent of our traffic was coming from web. Like weber fers on the upstart was five percent.

And then after doing all the seo stuff in waiting six months, he was twenty percent right. And now um a lot of our traffic was coming from web strained IOS. And then also this was pretty useful because people coming from web, you know, a lot of them only might have had android or we're on there laptops, right? So when we built our android up and web up, they started going there as well.

Before that, we had think we built our web before the android death. And on the web after we had a button that said, download for android and when you click that said, oh sorry, we don't have android putting your email email you out, right? So had like right a way less thing going on was pretty good move actually.

What about your newsletter? You mentioned on the anker website that you just have a newsletter that you try to put all of your existing users on. Does that help you grow and anyway and just like help you reengage existing users, like what's sort of the focus of having a newsletter and how big is IT if you don't mind sharing?

And chin crae now IT goes up to one hundred and seventy people, right? And we send IT out every months and a half. So I mean, there is a very yes prety good.

Um we don't do any like affiloir with other startups. So it's little just like we don't promote anything on the other thing. Us, right? So we just say, right, hey, here's what we've worked on the past months and a half. Here's all the new features.

Here's where you find them, right? We try the limited like four or five sections and in the very last section is just a hard to heart, hey, or a small team forward this newsletter to anybody who might find any more, right. So we do get some downloads there.

We do get some, some people subscribing, but mostly because people tend to have trading sprints and then they stop trading for a while and then come back into IT, right? That's when they are doing that actively. You know someone who might have turned out we send them the news letter like, hey, you know it's going to look a reminder, hey, we're slow around, right?

We also have a pushing notifications that go out routing code there to send IT out every once in a while based off these users last activity and what not a good way to get people to come back in. But for news letter specifically, it's just tell people, here's what we working on, giving the ideas reach out of the wise forward. The things letter.

I know people who have been doing literally nothing other than writing a news letter every day for three years, and they don't have one hundred and seventy thousand people on their news letter. I did you go to news letter that big? I thought, even your main focus, or these, just like everybody who signs up from your APP, is that your news letter is like the request .

of forward IT really working now. You're blemmyes now. I think we asked people I what's up to like when I signed up, you know they can click on, hey, I want to receive this newsletter by default or not.

Anto will check that we've change quite a bit since then, but essentially we don't don't send IT out very often, right? So not many people I subscribe from IT. We're very quickly about what goes on there right then, everyone, while we send the survey, people like a limited portion of that, I asked them, hi, what do you guys think we should build with?

So eventually all of us culminated, and you get to where you were when you quit your job last september, you made a post on the hackers, and you're basically like, he, you know what done making excuses? I want to take me to leave. I'm only one thirty.

I never going to have a Better time in my life to just do this. I have no responsibility. ie. Es, you don't have more gage, you not married, you have kids and you gave up a very well paying job. And amazon, i'm making two genre to get the year to go full time on this APP.

What was that like? Because that's not an easy decision to make even though you're up in twenty in a months like that still like I imagine most people in your life like what the hell you doing? Like why would you?

Why would you quit? I got a bunch of mixed actions.

Actually, though, was that you use me the most straight because he was, if I was signed, somebody who was also in the space, right? Or somebody who you had started coming, like, what are you waiting for you? Like I would have, of course, eight years ago, right? So I was one reaction I was getting, which which made me feel like, okay, should parents were like, are you in thing? right? So that was expected.

Friends were mixed, like some of them new, but were like, you know what you're doing? Others were like, do you making a ton of money? Why are you doing this? right? I think at the end of the day, I was just like, what will I not regret doing? And I know I won't regret taking a leap base on this. And plus, worst case, you've always get a job later, right? The tech companies aren't going anymore.

When I think about I mean, i'm going to go back again when I was a tal loser at your age or even slightly before then um like I was I was that kid in college where I would like meet with my advisor. Remember your meeting with my advisor and my third year and he was like, hey, listen, chaining like you gotta make a decision, like you gotto choose A A major or a minor i'd been there for three years and I still hadn't chosen and for me, the entire thing was any career path that I began to go down, or that I began to contemplate IT, unlike this is forever. It's like, what career handcuff s do I want to like, cough myself too, and then just have to do that all the time and and a sense, the thing that is most attractive to me about being an hacker, doing other things that I want to do, like I want to write a novel and I want to have all of these jobs where I get to like A, I get to be in control of my destiny, I get to like experiment with bunch of other things that set a is super intangible. But that seems like a big thing that also kind of inspires you.

Yeah not pressure for me. Yes, there's always okay if I serve my own saying and IT pays off, the payout is much bigger, but flexibilities is really important to me. And even though amazon was actually pretty flexible, like I could travel around the U.

S, they were cool with remote work there. The idea like, what if I want to go? I don't say the us and just go to europe for a bit or something and work while i'm there like I can do that. And on some reason, the idea of flexibility that you starting your own thing to seem super attractive.

Do you think you would have had trouble quitting if you had waited until you twenty five, twenty seven, thirty years old to take a leap?

I don't know. I think you would have been harder to leave if I had done and I was working another promotion at the time to get to look see there. I knew that was a lot more money um and I was like, maybe you would have been hard to leave that more money, but I was most certainly going to do this at some point.

And you know if for some reason and look back at a job, i'm going to do IT again. So I know that for sure already, right? I got a test of IT. It's a ton of fun. Definitely messes up your like working schedule because you have full flexibility that quite .

it's an interesting what's working schedule looking like now .

like a year night. So it's je IT. So I tried to wake up early, which worked like a week, and realistically, like, all transparently awake to, like, nine, thirty, ten, thirty, eleven. And I got two. We worked right with them.

like, I was right. So I struction corals like that so early, like nine thirty you're already awake.

I'm a night in the morning birds. So I try to do both. And IT doesn't work. But I mean that some structural going to we work like you sound like discipline. You've got you got some place that is a workplace for you and it's not the same as your home.

So I think IT like three times a week and then other times I go to coffee shop, but Normally it's like I eleven to five or six. And then for some reason, this has been development in the past month, like midnight to three and wildly productive. You know something about so quiet out you're liking that weird tired zone where you're not interest about what you're doing. So you i'm really calm.

I love the idea like either being early, up early, working early, doing surfer early or way late, because everyone else is asleep. It's funny. Courtland is the opposite of me.

I'm sort of like the morning lark. He's always been a night out all point out. There was some point where he crossed over and he was telling me I was right all the time. I don't know where he's at now, but like yeah, there's just there's like a magic to like you're not getting notifications on your phone, right? Like you know if you open up like social media, there's like less activity like you're just sort of there in the dark do and work IT works either way.

Like if you are the typical soft engineer, you want to stay a late and you're work in past my night. It's like you get that exact same experienced if you wake up super early in the morning like nothing is going on and you can just be that and the midday day, it's harder. So I can identify with that.

I was going to say they're just a lot less services like cator do at night. I love to go to a coffee shop at at when I am like I think that awesome .

seattle yeah they .

just everything that seattle was the like .

ah you .

want groceries, it's a thirty like you should out a luck eat tomorrow. The concept of quitting early and for twenty years and doing this like a Young age, I think it's really fast sitting too. I think it's kind of a started up police that like start up for a Young person's game.

You know, you just like you need less money, everything in about myself like if I were to quit in the hackers today, like I wouldn't be nearly as scrappy as I wasn't my early twenty. I live a bug s lifestyle. Like I need to make a certain manual ary.

Like, I just like I would need neither antonis savings or I would need like a lot of funding, otherwise I would just refuse to reverse. You know, I go back to like eating roman noodles and living you know like pay check to pay jack like he is hard to do that when you're older. And so I wonder like and I don't have you agreed like you feel the same way, right? Like you've got probably a death amount of savings. Do you feel like at thirty five people like now, I ve got to keep my, I mean, really like this nice case behind you, this nice apartment. Could you give really example?

I mean, I generally know i'm a weirdo. I mean, look, coron you and I talk all the time, you know that, like, I just happen to be in this phase of life. I don't know going back to maybe three or four years where there is a fire that got Sparked to me and the elasticity like the willingness like, you know, sort of live way more like a way more sadic lifestyle that I had when I was in my early and mid twice.

Now I kind of got that back, but without that weird exception for me yeah. And also i'll say there are certain things that I don't want to give up, like I definitely live and like a nice apartment, I wouldn't want to give that up. I buy like I spend a weird amount of money on books like a good body of mind was like, why do you have so many books? Like it's just the thing I want.

What would you give up? Would you sell all your books? Would you sell your expensive VR? Like, would you do you move into the city apartment?

And where I would not sell books, I would not sell books.

Kindle.

I get a kindle way.

Not so weird. What I do, what I i'll like to mitt this when I buy books like, I almost want IT to be so easily accessible to me, so I don't have an excuse to not read them that if I buy a book, I buy the physical book, I buy the e book, and I buy the audio book, like I just, I just do that. So there definitely like these weird booge tendencies that I have.

I don't think I give a books core on. I like kind of spoil, like I have to have a gym in my apartment. I like in new new york city.

If this winter, like in the winter, I just turned into kind of like A C. I. And I don't like walk the thirty.

You're just saying that you ouldn't give up anything. I just the things that .

you wouldn't give, but I don't it's like that, but I also like I don't have a car or care. It's like the things that I just named are the things that I really care about like I drink silent. I don't care about food.

I don't spend crap on food. I don't party really. I don't go out right, like I just hang out. I I guy work so I like have the things that .

fuel the work. How do you feel on sill's?

I feel like so the that I know I like to offend, I don't really like eating as much as other people like that's that's really like the the baseline a situation. What I do is algic like a soiling a day um and then I have like two other meals like real meals. For me it's like i'm such an optimization that if there's something that I don't really care about, like I don't really care about, like I don't like making food, I hate IT I won't wait on IT I won't learn how to do IT my girlfriend and awesome code so that stop. But like if I if i'm hungry right now and I also want to be like coating or writing or doing some work, like I pop, I just go grab a soiled and in the even sort of weirder thing is I also like, I like, I need caffeine, but I don't like having to make coffee all the time. So all just like whatever all to take a caffeine pill like these tiny little weird efficiencies.

caving piles in the yeah.

I like these these little efficiencies. I just don't give me sure. I just like just get get the fuel in my body couldn't .

do IT food is my vice if I could have like a shitty superpower would be, be able to eat an finite amount food, like twelve meals a day. They'd all be delicious. None of them would be soiled.

The coffee is awesome. So, yeah.

coffee delicious too. I love coffee. Yeah, can do IT.

Yeah, yeah. What are you? What are you working for? I mean, you said you wanted freedom. You said you wanted flexibility, stock alarm ers at twenty camera or think it's is you and one cofounder, how far do you want to push and what do you want to do with the business that you're creating in the money that you're generating?

I feel like IT would be nice to have either one or multiple like life services. I think that is the dream, right? You don't really answer anyone. You cannot work on your own thing. People recognize you for helping them out in and some aspect of their life with you know something you built. I think all that is great for know you and and you're cycling what not but you know at the end of they having income to do the things you want to do um and you know if the thing you want to do is also making you outcome is the best thing ever right um I think working at a big tech job there's always like, oh I have to do this one thing really don't want to do or you know I might get laid off as my self or someone just made up ten .

elodie like something all the company employees.

yeah I like, I like pay attention but doesn't .

i'm not really have a friend at amazon who got laid off .

the day before .

yesterday so jez could be yeah I don't know.

I think something about that is really nice nice it's a great way to live life rate um especially because your building things that are helping other people and making money while doing IT and the flexibility makes IT so that you know you will have your life hover. You want like I move from seattle a few months, right? yeah.

What do you think you know in the past three years of you working on this? Join y is a sort of late cofounder growing up to ten k you know year and out past twenty years and revenue. What do you think is something that you've learned on this journey that a fledgling I hacker might benefit from hearing?

There's a more money to go around and initially think, right, people are willing to spend money on things that make their life Better.

I think that's that's something that I didn't realize that then just for some reason, I had this idea that to make any money with the company to build this big thing or big grand thing or self, have physical products, something but you know, like hate know you might have known my emails, he dog on right, like I paid fftt email. It's ridiculous, but it's so nice. Like IT makes life so much.

Email is free and you .

pay for IT yeah, it's ridiculous. But I think that's something that really helped to reshape my view of how .

about awesome? Well, listen yahia as a thirty five old training, I really love your understory as your age chaining. I have been a little bit more reasonable and it's it's been an awesome conversation um where can people who are listening go to find more about you and like sock alarm and other stuff into i'm .

finally trying to get into twitter, right? Like something resisted IT for so long. But but you like twitter. My name is yahoo. Pretty much like that made.

Did I see the stock alone? Like this stock alarm twitter account? It's like all automated .

pretty much i'm trying to post something as well, but I just I guys to post that make up this not but mostly a planet stock ARM. Join our newsletter or you know checking out that I do actually post company updates on twitter like then exit A. Working on some cool stuff were actually wanting like a business region soon. So that should be like, nice know for what mad firms theyve been using us.

That's the whole thing here. Thanks again for come on.

Yes, thanks, guys.