#0 - We sell hours, and hours don't scale. Now what?
Ship the Diff
https://shipthediff.com/episodes/000-hours-dont-scale/

We run a consultancy teaching agentic coding to engineering teams, it pays well, and it cannot scale, because selling hours means someone has to be in the room. That unsolved problem is why this show exists.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/R-_aCoymNQk
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7d8TvTAzOLySeIFoi9Nkvh

Transcript

00:00  Hello everyone and welcome to the 0th episode of Ship the Diff, which is my new podcast.
00:08  And usually I only do content, podcast, videos, LinkedIn posts, etc. in Danish.
00:18  So this is actually my first English content series that I've ever done.
00:25  And I'm super excited about that because I've built somewhat an audience in AI and AI engineering and agentic engineering.
00:38  Using AI agents to code and stuff like that.
00:41  And in general just AI and software development in Denmark where I have a Danish podcast called Verbos Podcast.
00:50  And, you know, so we've managed to basically, in the company that I have together with my two co -founders and for the podcast.
00:59  And I have also with my YouTube channel, I do kind of like YouTube channel type videos.
01:05  Mainly from my car where I basically just pull up my smartphone and start to record myself.
01:11  I've managed to build, you know, an audience very targeted on software developers actually.
01:19  But since all of this agentic engineering vibe coding using agents exploded, it has basically been exploding in the past year or so.
01:30  So the audience have actually expanded quite a lot because using agents have become relevant to a way bigger, you know, group of people.
01:39  Both, you know, software engineers but also more, you know, general knowledge workers as you also might experience.
01:48  Yeah, so that's kind of like the Danish thing I'm doing.
01:51  But I always wanted to, I always wanted to kind of like also engage with the more international AI engineering community.
02:04  And also, you know, I don't know if you can call it startup, but, you know, tech business at least community.
02:12  I guess you could call it startup.
02:14  So, yeah, and that's what I'm doing with this podcast.
02:17  And a few words about the podcast and what I kind of like think it should be.
02:24  This podcast is about me and my co -founders building computerlove .tech, which is our business.
02:33  And I also intend to bring along other founders, tech software, whatever founders,
02:40  who are also building a business to kind of like, you know, share knowledge, share war stories, thoughts on strategy, challenges, all of that stuff.
02:51  That's kind of like the idea behind this podcast.
02:54  And then, you know, doing it in English will kind of like open up the total addressable market.
03:02  I guess you can call it the TAM quite a bit.
03:05  So I'm pretty excited about that.
03:07  And I have been doing content for about 10 years now.
03:11  I started out on YouTube talking about crate digging and, you know, finding vinyl records to kind of like make hip -hop beats out of.
03:18  That was a thing I did a lot back in the days.
03:21  I started doing that in Danish.
03:23  And then when I finished as an electrical engineer and started working on AI, I started, you know, six years ago or so,
03:31  posting on LinkedIn and doing YouTube videos on AI and engineering and stuff like that.
03:37  Yeah.
03:38  And now I'm kind of like, and then I've also done a podcast in Denmark.
03:44  It's actually the number one technology podcast in Denmark, or at least it have been.
03:50  That a couple of weeks ago.
03:51  So we are charting pretty, pretty okay on the technology category on Apple podcast.
03:58  Yeah.
03:59  So, so, so, so, so, so I've kind of like done that.
04:02  And now I'm starting this podcast to kind of like, as I said, engage more with the international AI engineering, software engineering, business startup community,
04:12  because I think that is interesting.
04:15  At the same time, you know, I know what it's like building a podcast like this and, you know, in general, just do content.
04:23  This specific episode of the podcast, I, at least if things happen the way they used to, not a lot of people are going to listen to this one.
04:33  But I have found that if you just stick with it and just, you know, keep publishing and being, is being consistent,
04:41  people will slowly, you know, just, I will become better at actually making these podcasts and maybe become better at not, you know, making content in English.
04:52  In Denmark, we call it Danglish.
04:54  It's a mix of Danish and English when Danes speak English.
04:58  And I'm not aware, you know, how, how bad it is with me right now.
05:02  But, but I imagine that it's going to be better as we progress in the series.
05:07  Yeah.
05:08  So, so the plan is and the strategy is to just, you know, record one of these podcasts, one of these podcasts every week, once a week and just ship it, ship the diff, as we say.
05:21  Yeah.
05:22  That's actually the concept and what you can expect of this format.
05:26  And as I said, I would, I'm considering, you know, also the plan is to bring guests along.
05:32  Yeah.
05:32  To also just engage and create community.
05:36  I've also in Denmark built a union called, or a community called Danish Data Science Community.
05:42  So I have a lot of experience on community building and content creation and stuff like that.
05:46  So, yeah.
05:47  Great.
05:48  Before I, you know, yeah, just one thing I want to say.
05:54  This podcast is really inspired by another podcast that I follow that is somehow similar.
06:03  And that is the, the, the podcast called Still Early, which is two guys from, from phone .ink,
06:10  which is a startup here in Denmark, Nicholas and Zoom.
06:17  And they are doing a really great podcast where they're basically just talking about their business.
06:24  And I'm just really excited about that one.
06:26  I'm, I'm, you know, I listen to that every, every time I do.
06:29  I think it's bi -weekly.
06:31  I listen to it every time.
06:32  And I really like, you know, the concept of just, you know, getting a little behind, become, you know,
06:37  coming up a little bit behind the scenes, hearing what they're up to, what's the kind of like status on their businesses.
06:45  Yeah.
06:46  I, I just really liked that format and I wanted to do it myself also.
06:49  So, yeah, so sorry for, for kind of like copycatting the, the, the, the format a little to the guys on Still Early.
06:58  Yeah.
07:00  But I now I've also, you know, made some, some, some promo for them.
07:05  So, so I would also encourage you to go and, and, and subscribe to their podcast as well.
07:10  Yeah.
07:12  Yes.
07:13  And maybe a little bit about the business and, you know, how we get, how we got started and stuff like that.
07:18  So, so yeah, so it basically all started one and a half year ago, I guess, almost where me and Christian got connected on LinkedIn and kind of like talked about that.
07:31  It could be cool, you know, to do some, you know, some business around, you know, doing speaks, talks, maybe doing workshops and or courses or something like that.
07:45  And then we, we paid a lot of attention and was, you know, messing a lot around with this agentic coding stuff that was going on specifically in Cursor was one of the first tools to, to kind of like bring this experience along as far as I remember.
08:03  And, um, yeah, so we just started messing around with that and using it and was pretty, uh, amazed by it.
08:09  And then we thought, Hey man, we can teach this.
08:12  And then we just, uh, you know, Christian called up, uh, one, uh, one guy from his network and, uh, we simply, you know, asked if we could, uh, if we could sell a workshop for them in using Cursor specifically, um, for cheap, right.
08:28  Uh, to kind of like get started and, and learn what this would, what's actually like.
08:33  Right.
08:33  So we sold a very cheap workshop, got started and got some, some learnings from, uh, from how we could actually teach developer this, uh, developers this.
08:42  And we started, you know, racing, slowly raising the price and, uh, until we were at full price.
08:47  And then we just started, you know, doing, uh, these workshops maybe, you know, once a week or, uh, once every other week.
08:54  We roughly had that cadence.
08:57  Um, and we both used, he, especially Christian, my, my, my partner, uh, who's my co -founder now, he used, uh, his network to kind of like, uh, get customers.
09:06  And I used my, uh, my reach on LinkedIn, uh, to, to kind of like, uh, yeah, spread the word.
09:13  And, uh, we actually managed to, to, to, to, to get a quite a lot of success with that.
09:18  I had a day job at the time as a leading lead AI engineer at a company called Dinero, which is a Danish accounting software company, uh, for small businesses.
09:27  The most kind of like used, uh, accounting software for small businesses here in Denmark.
09:33  And I was four days a week there.
09:36  And I had the one day where I did these workshops.
09:39  Um, and at some point, you know, actually, of course I had my salary from my day job at Dinero, but at some point this, this, uh, workshop business.
09:48  That I had on the side, actually, uh, I could actually pay my bills, you know, just from that.
09:54  Uh, and I also thought it was super exciting to, to, to just get out and meet so many different, uh, software engineering teams in all sorts of companies all over the country.
10:07  Basically here in Denmark, um, we learned a lot of that, you know, we actually learned a ton from that.
10:12  Uh, just, you know, stuff like different teams, sizes of teams, uh, how people are organizing.
10:22  We also learned, you know, how, uh, how did people use a genetic engineering?
10:28  And we taught, of course, also taught them too.
10:30  So we also saw them actually doing it and saw what worked and what didn't.
10:33  So we got a lot of knowledge about that.
10:36  And also the, the exercises that we did on the workshop, we're still doing was very hands -on.
10:42  So we also learned and, and, and it was a hands -on in, uh, you know, they should actually also try to solve real tasks on their real code base.
10:50  Right.
10:50  And so we also, uh, when doing these workshops, we got, we learned a lot about, you know, uh, you know, uh, software setups, systems, CICD pipelines, architecture, different approaches.
11:05  Uh, some, some companies have a lot of technical depth.
11:08  Some, some companies are just, you know, super, uh, DevOps, CICD.
11:14  Uh, we also learned a lot about, you know, how to organize around delivering value using, uh, you know, in software development teams.
11:22  Um, the common thing we see is, uh, this is more like this feature factory kind of way of doing it.
11:28  But, uh, we also see some who are, have kind of like moved to the product operating model with a more, you know, cross -functional autonomous teams.
11:37  And, um, and also we started, you know, seeing some, uh, as you know,
11:42  developers got better and better at using agentic AI.
11:45  We saw some, you know, bottlenecks actually emerge where, you know, in these, uh, software or feature factory setups, the, the people actually writing tickets to the engineers to, to implement were becoming the bottleneck as engineers got better and better at, uh, actually using agents and creating the work quicker.
12:08  Right.
12:08  So, yeah, so we, we've, we just, uh, learned a ton of things, uh, the past one and one and a half year.
12:15  And it's, you know, we're still doing these workshops and that's kind of like the main thing we're doing in the company right now.
12:20  Still learning a ton of stuff about, you know, uh, software organizations, uh, how they use, uh, agentic engineering and just, you know, what the current situation in the field is about the space.
12:35  Uh, also, you know, feelings, you know, what are, what are people actually feeling about this?
12:39  How is it to lead a team, uh, that is going to adopt this and all of the things really?
12:46  Yeah.
12:46  So, uh, yeah, so, so I was just very fascinated about that learning and, you know, coming out to so many companies.
12:52  And also for a long time, I wanted to try to actually become self -employed and actually starting a company.
12:59  So I decided to, uh, to quit my job at Dinero.
13:02  It was a great place to work, right?
13:04  But, uh, I wanted to start my own business, right?
13:07  So I actually did that, um, and went, uh, solo.
13:11  I still did the workshops with Christian, but we had, you know, he had a company and I had a company and then we just, you know, shared the profits of doing the work, the workshops.
13:21  Um, but, you know, uh, in the past two months we have actually, uh, we have actually, uh, and then also my, my, my former colleague at a company called Ekstra Bladet here in Denmark, um, Jonas, uh, also decided to quit his job.
13:37  And, uh, I asked him if he wanted to create a company together and I asked Christian if he wanted to create a company together.
13:43  And yeah, now we have, uh, what is called an ApS, uh, basically a, a specific form of a company that you can form here in Denmark.
13:52  Uh, we have that together, uh, now and have actually just, you know, got our, uh, bank account.
13:58  That takes a lot of time to get a bank account here, at least in our situation.
14:03  Um, but, uh, so we're basically up and running.
14:06  We have had a summer vacation with our family and families and are back in business.
14:13  And, uh, yeah.
14:15  And, uh, just, you know, to put a bit of words on, you know, the current situation of the company, um, it's going pretty well.
14:21  There's a lot of demand.
14:22  We are pretty, uh, pretty well known in this space, uh, because, especially because of the podcast, but, but also because we have, uh, we have, you know, a big network on LinkedIn, uh, at least in the space.
14:36  And, uh, the scale of Denmark, right.
14:37  So, um, and, you know, so, so, so, so we are very blessed to, to have, uh, quite a bit of, you know, inbound, I guess it's called inbound leads.
14:48  You know, people reaching out to us and asking if they, um, we want to, uh, do workshops with them.
14:53  We're, we, we're very blessed with that.
14:56  Uh, so business is doing a super great.
14:58  Uh, however, um, we also really want to, uh, because basically right now we are a consultancy company, um, where we are kind of like selling our hours.
15:11  Right.
15:12  Um, so we are kind of like bottlenecked by our time.
15:15  And because, you know, we have to be somewhere, uh, that's kind of like the bottleneck of, uh, you know, how we can scale the business.
15:23  Right. So as many other consultancy companies I've learned, we want to become, uh, basically a product company.
15:31  Uh, so that is kind of like the challenge, uh, going forward is to, uh, to, to make that transition from being a work.
15:40  Right now we are basically viewed as a workshop, software development workshop business here in Denmark.
15:46  Uh, and the challenge going forward is to actually become a product company basically who are selling software to, on, you know, a subscription.
15:57  Um, best case in, you know, for enterprises.
16:01  And that was also a thing that we discovered, uh, use with these, uh, these workshops that we are really learning a lot about what problems, uh, is, what problems there is out in the enterprise, uh, you know, setting, um, related to actually being successful with using agents internally.
16:25  Um, and that we, uh, we, we, we want that kind of like learning and that knowledge we want to, to use, uh, to, to also build product.
16:33  And ideally we want to kind of like combine these two things so we can have the workshop thing be both, you know, a, a source of revenue, but also, uh, a source kind of like a discovery, um, learning, um, actually also sometimes sales activity.
16:54  Uh, but simply an activity where we are both paid, but also learn about the market, uh, which then in turn, uh, gives us knowledge in order to know what can we build that people want to pay for.
17:07  So, so yeah, but I think, uh, that is maybe going to be a lot of the topic, uh, going forward in the next couple of episodes.
17:17  Um, I also imagine to bring my co -founders, Jonas and Christian along to, to kind of like talk about them with the business, uh, or about the business.
17:26  I also imagine that it's actually a pretty good, you know, habit to just, you know, once a week, uh, reflect on the business, uh, maybe together with your co -founders, maybe together with someone other, someone else who also have a business.
17:40  Um, yeah, and just, you know, talk about what it's like and share experiences, ideas, challenges, uh, solutions, whatever.
17:50  Yes.
17:52  Great.
17:53  Um, and also, uh, yeah, the name of the podcast, maybe I should just put a few words on that.
17:58  Ship the Diff.
17:59  Uh, I actually, first I wanted to call it, uh, Read, Write, Bash, because that's kind of like the two, three foundational tools an agent have.
18:08  Uh, and then I did, did some brainstorming actually with, uh, with, uh, with, uh, with ChatGPT and, uh, you know, just had to generate a lot of names.
18:17  And then it actually suggested Ship the Diff at some point.
18:20  And I just thought it was cool.
18:22  It sounded cool.
18:23  You know, Ship the Diff.
18:25  It's kind of like very, it's just, it's just nice.
18:28  It's just nice to say, uh, it kind of like speaks to, you know, this, uh, put yourself out there, uh, get shit done.
18:37  Uh, a bit like, you know, uh, move fast and break things ish, or at least, you know, put your work out there.
18:44  Ship the Diff, you know, ship the change you made immediately, basically, to, to engage with the world and, you know, uh, put yourself and your product out there.
18:53  Um, and yeah, then, you know, the .com domain was, uh, was, uh, was, uh, available and very cheap actually also.
19:01  So, yeah, so I just, uh, bought that one and, uh, decided to call, uh, to call the podcast Ship the Diff.
19:09  And then I have, of course, also, you know, had an AI agent, uh, you know, do all the graphics and thumbnails and, uh, do, I'm doing a lot of automation, uh, with the podcast.
19:24  I also imagine to, to have an agent edit this and create clips from this that I can share on YouTube and stuff like that.
19:32  So, um, so, uh, so maybe I'm also going to share a little bit about that.
19:37  That's also an interesting thing for many business owners and, uh, you know, um, entrepreneurs is how can we run our company more efficient using AI agents?
19:48  Uh, and that's kind of like a big theme in our company also because, you know, the product that we are building is, uh, very kind of like, uh, it really, that's kind of like relevant to that, right?
19:59  Um, and I'm going to tell you more about the actual product that we're building right now and, uh, the whole process with, uh, with that.
20:07  Uh, that's, uh, that's, uh, yeah, that's, that's actually a challenge, you know, going from being a consultancy company to a product company.
20:16  That's a, that's a big challenge.
20:17  And I know a lot of, uh, companies are struggling with this as well.
20:21  And, you know, it's very hard because, you know, the consultancy thing can really pay you quick, you know, that's quick money, quick, quick, good money, right?
20:28  Um, so you have to prioritize that.
20:32  But at the same time, you have to balance that with staying focused on, uh, building your product and getting that out there.
20:39  Um, so that's a very interesting balance.
20:42  Uh, we're basically doing this, you know, we have not, you know, got any, uh, funding or, you know, VC funding or anything for this.
20:49  We have just basically, we're self -funding this using, uh, with workshops and, you know, striking that balance.
20:56  And, um, yeah, basically not becoming locked up in being a consultancy company, but making sure that all the things you do actually, there's a strategy behind it.
21:10  So it all points in the direction of actually, uh, building a product and, you know, becoming closer, coming closer and closer to, to, to, uh, getting recurring revenue from, uh, software products.
21:22  Uh, that's a very interesting challenge and requires a lot of strategic, strategic thinking, even though we're only three, right?
21:29  So it's not like, yeah.
21:32  Um, yes.
21:34  And, uh, I imagine that a lot of other companies can relate to this.
21:38  So I guess that's going to be a big topic in, in, in, in the podcast.
21:44  Uh, at least, uh, I think it's very interesting challenge.
21:47  Um, yeah.
21:50  Also maybe, uh, and it's silly, right?
21:54  But we have some roles in the company.
21:56  So Christian, he is the COO.
21:58  He also, he's also, uh, yeah.
22:01  Yeah.
22:02  He's basically the COO.
22:03  And, uh, Jonas is the CTO.
22:05  And I am the CEO.
22:07  And it sounds super silly to kind of like, uh, put titles on it like that when we're basically a company of three.
22:13  But it's, it's like, it, it helps actually to, to kind of like put some labels on and say, okay, so that's your main responsibility.
22:21  That's your main responsibility and so on.
22:23  So, so yeah, that's kind of like the thing.
22:26  And I have actually a, uh, if you go to shipthediff .com, just, you know, shipthediff in one take .com.
22:35  It's a very basic website, right?
22:37  I imagine to do it, uh, like develop it over time.
22:40  But you can sign up for the newsletter there where I think I'm just going to send out a mail, uh, that summarizes each episode, uh, every week.
22:50  Uh, depending on, you know, if you, if you think it's super annoying, uh, I won't do that, I guess.
22:56  Uh, this is my first newsletter.
22:58  So, so, so I don't know really how to run a newsletter like that, but, uh, we'll, we'll take it as we, we, we go.
23:05  And, uh, yeah.
23:06  And I also have a little mailbag, a little mailbag, um, concept that I want to introduce at some point, but, uh, not yet.
23:16  But, uh, but, uh, so you can write in and actually we can, uh, I can read some of your mails up and, uh, yeah.
23:23  Maybe you can promote your product or service or whatever you're selling.
23:26  It could be interesting.
23:27  Uh, I guess, you know, this podcast is about business, right?
23:30  So, so why not?
23:32  Great.
23:33  This was the zero episode of, uh, Ship the Diff.
23:37  Uh, please subscribe on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, depending on where you listen.
23:45  And, uh, yes, subscribe to the, uh, the, the, the, the newsletter if you want.
23:52  Um, anything that I need to remember to say?
23:56  No, I don't think so.
23:57  So, uh, yeah, that should be maybe connect on me on, connect with me on LinkedIn or X.
24:03  Um, I have a profile there, but thank you for listening.
24:06  I can't wait to the first episode where we're actually getting this, uh, this thing started.
24:13  So, uh, so thank you for, for, for tuning in.
24:15  Bye.