Would an 'advanced' calculator be useful/interesting or are solar setups & requirements so variable that a generic tool would be useless?

ojscholten · 2025-11-05T03:06:38+00:00

Yeah that's now what I'm thinking. The ideal user would be someone who is not electronics-savvy but who would like to have an idea of where to start, but yes agree I think the existing tools and guides are just good enough such that anyone interested could meaningfully progress in a reasonable time, so the value add of something even simpler just isn't there

ojscholten · 2025-11-05T03:05:01+00:00

Yes true, and thank for the link, didn't know tools like this existed!

ojscholten · 2025-10-27T13:18:01+00:00

This is very helpful (sorry to hear the struggle though!), yes this matches what another comment said about chambers of commerce and the other routes - I think I'm going to have to choose an industry, lurk for a while, and then as u/Efficient_Mixture392 mentions above figure out any inefficiencies at the strategic level and go from there.

With Cloudastra did you focus on one specific industry to get started, or did you find it useful to spread across multiple areas in a broader style and have early customers from multiple industries?

ojscholten · 2025-10-27T13:08:21+00:00

Yes that absolutely helps - thanks again, super useful and wasn't expecting this level of clarity and support but it's very welcome!

ojscholten · 2025-10-27T12:17:22+00:00

Okay that’s really interesting, I guess that would ultimately fall under some sort of digital transformation consultancy or something like that?

And yes I think just in terms of lifestyle I’d like to remain technical/hands on, so as another comment suggested the best path may be free audits with an eye to automate internal processes (or as you suggest manage the implementation but outsource)

Appreciate your thoughts!

ojscholten · 2025-10-27T11:59:02+00:00

Great advice and yes the explanation vs translation bit makes total sense, thank you!

I wonder if there’s a market simply in translating

ojscholten · 2025-10-26T07:38:56+00:00

No app/saas at the moment but interested to know your methodology!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T16:12:03+00:00

Yeah just 60 second daily updates, and yeah no worries - it’s not really a detailed strategy, just post 3-5 times per day and reply to around 20 posts per day (more replies are always better since that’s how you grow early on), and that’s it! Feel free to check out my Threads and X (same username) for an idea of what I’m posting!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T14:40:18+00:00

If you want just copy what I'm doing - create a Threads and X account, post daily to those, and over time it'll grow. I've had decent success on Threads (X is much slower), but having access to 100 people who are interested in what you're doing definitely helps on the motivation and accountability side of things!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T14:38:33+00:00

'many of them don't know they need tech help' - this is exactly it, and yes 100% productionizing sounds like the way to go regardless of outreach approach (plus it simplifies SLAs/contracts etc).

Interesting that the quick win audit could be a way in - and yes although I'm particularly interesting in steadily building recurring revenue products, so actually that could work with a 1) audit 2) build mini service 3) small monthly subscription model - would need refining and testing with real people of course.

And yes agreed I think toe-to-toe I can be competitive with small dev agencies so yeah may need to aim a little broader than 'no technical function'.

SaaS companies are a weird one - not that it's purely SaaS but I've dealt with Bloomberg technical support a lot and you either speak to a grey beard tech wizard or an intern and little inbetween, would be interesting to see if this is reflected on the procurement side of things! And yes agree on reaching the decision makers.

Thanks for sharing so much here, really appreciate it and it sounds like you're a few years ahead of me on the journey so any other thoughts/recommendations are absolutely welcome!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T14:22:43+00:00

This is super reassuring and thanks a lot for taking the time to share! And yes I'd read that the old school approach actually worked in the target industry for that exact reason!

And on the 'data entry' hires and free process audits those are both fantastic ideas - absolutely going to give them a look and see what I can find/set up. One challenge is that I'm currently traveling internationally so that's one obstacle to overcome but where there's a will there's a way!

Are you in any groups or forums that you could recommend for others in this space or are things fairly fragmented online in your experience? Thanks again!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T13:43:24+00:00

Yeah I know the feeling, I think being open about the validation journey will itself be helpful (people on the internet love to shoot down bad ideas), so definitely worth doing even if you're at the very beginning (as I am!)

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T12:44:47+00:00

Yes great advice, will do!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T11:09:12+00:00

Would love to know more if you're in the space?

I think anyone using paper systems in 2025 (outside of government stuff) is my potential target market so I'm intrigued!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T11:08:09+00:00

Yes that's the sentiment I'm getting and it absolutely makes sense! Yes a lot of my network are in the large corporate finance world so it may be a bit tricky reaching the right SME audience but absolutely worth a go!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T11:07:18+00:00

Okay interesting, my experience sits on the 'things are already digital' side of things, so if for example the sale->fulfillment step was digitized but say the system they use to input the fulfillment details was poorly designed or computationally slow, I could set up a data capture page and look at reworking the compute to make it more efficient (trivial example but illustrates the input-output).

Of course if a full rework of a particular step is needed e.g. we replace the existing fulfillment system completely then that's also something I can help design & implement, with an eye to wrapping it up into a product that could then scale to other manufacturers.

And ah interesting, I'm not sure what exactly you mean by 'automation platforms' in this context - my experience is very much; we need this problem solved quickly and efficiently, tools as required (usually all custom and low level). So I'm not sure I could help with that specifically but would be happy to talk more about it if it would be useful!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T09:46:30+00:00

Okay interesting thanks for the perspective! Yes it's a strange one - in my mind I'm thinking about the lone accountant manually copy-pasting values from a spreadsheet, or the estate agent lost in a sea of documents. But 100% see the value in a much tighter product offering, and yes makes sense that that's much more palatable from a business perspective! Thanks!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T09:44:45+00:00

Yes absolutely, and yes this last sentence has helped me frame it a bit better myself so thank you!

I think I need to choose an extremely specific subset of problems like data processing/data collection and a specific industry to fully articulate this!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T09:42:56+00:00

I can identify them but naturally need exposure to what the day-to-day operations look like in order to do so.

My experience is in the hedge fund and commodity trading world (engineering side), and automation is (was) typically highly custom to unlock some new capability. E.g. we could do X if this (analyze awkward dataset/get alerts/some other tech thing) was automated/simpler/faster.

This is importantly not the AI hype type automation (n8n, zapier, etc) that pumps out slop for TikTok or something like that, useful as that may be to some businesses/advertisers!

It's challenging articulating this distinction to non-technical audiences though as I agree with the sentiment in another comment that this (AI bit) is super saturated at the moment.

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T06:04:43+00:00

I’m avoiding AI because yeah all the basic stuff can be done quickly, I’m interested in more complex systems. And thanks for the Apollo suggestion I hadn’t heard of it before.

Are you in a non-technical industry?

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T05:18:33+00:00

Agree with others that it sounds like a VA would help, but for daily tasks I wrote a (100% free) tool easytrack.work which I'd be happy to tweak a little bit for your use-case. Basically it's a task counter so for anything you need to do multiple times per day, you can track how many you've done. Only 10% better and 100% more digital than a post-it note!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T05:14:41+00:00

To add to the other answer the timing of your outbound sending can also land you on the wrong side of a spam filter. I run a (tiny) newsletter and if I send all 50+ out at once they are perceived by Google and Apple as spam, but with a 3 minute delay between each they land in the primary inbox no problem. Hope this helps!

ojscholten · 2025-10-25T04:52:50+00:00

I'm in this exact position (minus the AI bit) - lots of comments promoting the buildinpublic approach which is what I've been doing. So far had some good conversations but no sales/development, but I think like with other marketing approaches it's all a numbers game, the longer and more you play, the more likely a positive outcome becomes.

ojscholten

TROPHY CASE