The last couple of months have been exciting so I want to share some details about what I've been up to lately: launching new products, traveling through Thailand, a visit to the ER, a big new update for HelpKit, and more.
Enjoying Thailand
I've been living in Thailand for almost four months now, and overall, I'm really enjoying it here. Similar to Indonesia, the people are extremely friendly, and it makes a big difference in my daily mood. Growing up in Central Europe, people rarely even looked at me in a coffee shop, but here, I've had funny conversations with baristas, security guards, and others purely spontaneously.
In addition to Bangkok, I've traveled to some of the Thai islands, including Ko Tao, Ko Samui, and Ko Pha-ngan. I also flew to Cambodia for a few days, but that's a story for another day. Life on these islands is extremely laid-back, and it's great if you need to recharge your batteries. I spent three days doing the Open Water scuba diving theory course, graduated with 99% accuracy, and then found out on the first training day in the water that I absolutely hate being underwater with all the gear attached to me. I guess I'll stick to snorkeling for the time being ¯\(ツ)/¯.
New Products
I've been working on my main project, HelpKit, for almost two years now, and it's been going great. I still enjoy building new features. However, I've found that constantly working solely on one single product makes me feel depressed after a while.
I need a way to deploy my creativity and business ideas. I want to start new things, try out new stuff, and potentially fail big time or maybe celebrate some novel success. Building fun, smaller products is a great way for that. While I'm still keeping my main focus on HelpKit, luckily, its setup is now allowing me some slack for some new experiments.
Speaking of new products, I just launched a brand new one a few weeks ago:
Product Video Examples is a curated library of over 100+ hand-selected product videos to help you create engaging product videos. The story behind it is quite simple: as a product video aficionado, I spent countless hours scouring the internet for inspiration and saving dozens of videos that stood out to me. Eventually, I had a lightbulb moment - why not create an engaging library out of it and share it with others to learn from? That's how the idea was born.
In case you wonder about tha stats: PVE ranked #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt and made ~$700 in revenue in the past three weeks.
HelpKit AI
Like many other people, I got into the rabbit hole of AI/GPT, and I'm now working on a big new AI chatbot feature for HelpKit called HelpKit AI. I'm still learning about fine-tuning, embeddings, and dealing with various edge cases of the GPT APIs, but everything is taking shape, and I'm planning to release the beta very soon. Exciting times!
Hello Emergency Room
As I was returning to Bangkok, I received a not-so-nice gift: acute tonsillitis. I had been dealing with a minor sore throat for a few days, but one morning, I woke up unable to swallow. Drinking water became a huge challenge, and the pain was so intense that I had to grip onto something whenever I had to swallow. Thinking I was #strongman enough to handle it, I did not consider going to the hospital. However, hours later, I was tied to my bed with a 41°C/105°F fever. I tried to sleep it off, but at 4 am, I had to swallow my pride and go to the ER. They gave me strong antibiotics and antiseptics, and just hours after taking them, I could finally drink water again. The entire experience prevented me from working for an entire week, which was the longest time I had spent away from my laptop in years. If you're curious, I've written about being prepared for emergencies when traveling in my most recent blog post here.
Getting healthier (again)
It turns out that living in Bali last year with the best food on every corner can make you gain some weight. When I came home this winter, I was quite shocked to see that I had developed a little dad bod. I hated it. So, I started a more vigorous workout schedule and restricted my caloric intake. I also started doing Muay Thai, which is an amazing cardio workout. Let's hope the six-pack comes back soon before I spend time at the beach again. 🤞
Oh yeah, also... I was forced by Pieter Levels to buy an air fryer and join the healthy #airfryeverything gang. If you don't understand why you absolutely need an air fryer in your life, then...
Focusing on work – rarely leaving the house
About the hole I was talking above… After traveling a lot last month, my main goal these days is to cut away distractions and fully focus on shipping features and new ideas. It’s practically impossible to build new things while constantly being on the road. Therefore, I'm spending a lot of time in my apartment complex, which has a gym, library, garden, pool, and more. I rarely leave the house.
I'm realizing more and more that I can't do too many things at once. I get sucked into analysis paralysis, where I end up doing nothing instead of something. So, I'm trying out “focus weeks” where I solely focus on one specific project or idea for the entire week and cut out all other distractions. This approach has been working really well for me so far, but I'll report back once I have more experience with it.
Thai is hard
Well, Thai is hard. I somehow convinced myself to start learning the basics of the language. Pros of the language will tell you that before you can actually start learning Thai, you should be quite comfortable with reading the Thai script. So, for the past three weeks, I've been studying the script. At first, everything seemed like a huge, impossible task, but I'm slowly seeing some small wins, and I absolutely love it. Let's see how this turns out.
