Fail Forward: From Startup Failure to YouTube Triumph with Arjan Egges

Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and if you've ever looked up anything with regards to Python online, you might have come across our Young Akas AKA Our Young Codes. Today he's my guest on the podcast as well and we cover his origin story. Starting out as educator at the University of Utrecht, venturing in startups as an entrepreneur. High highs and low lows to eventually becoming a content creator on YouTube and again, an educator. Such a joy to listen to his episode.

So enjoy Beyond Coding and is this the the first podcast

you've done? Actually, yes. Yeah. Yeah. OK. You're you're my. I don't know how you call that thing. The first podcast, Let's give it to that, yeah. That sounds a bit more friendly. Yeah. Are you planning to do more? Yeah, I I really like the idea of maybe at some point starting my own podcast.

Not not really the interview format that we're having now, but more like I wanna do it together with some of my teammates and we just, you know, have a chat about software and whatever we're working on. Also kind of to give a background on what we as team are doing. Yeah, the people. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, that's nice. I had a friend of mine, Luca Rossi, and he does the refactoring newsletter on Sub Stack which is gaining a lot of popularity.

And then now he back then when we had the conversation, we mostly covered about content and written form content, what he does. And then afterwards I was like, have you ever thought about like expanding? And I was like, yeah, I've always wanted to do kind of a podcast, but he doesn't really listen to a lot of audio components. He says I I read a lot and then writing because of that makes a lot of sense.

But now I see he's actually started his podcast and I mean since he's been doing content, he knows kind of how to start. So his line up of like the 1st 10 episodes are like super good basically. So I'm sure he's going to go off with a head start, which is really cool for him. Yeah, it really helps. Like if you're already doing content you already know, like, OK, I need the schedule and I need these steps and this is the stuff that I'm going to need to

record this properly. Yeah, so it just saves so much time if you already know how to do that. Yeah, it's it's kind of a learning process. You have to have experienced that before, yeah?

But before you got into content creation I I had a look at your LinkedIn profile and you were a long, long time professor like at the University of Utrecht if I recall correctly. Yeah, that's right. You have very long time. Yeah, for about like, I think 10 plus years. Yeah. What? What made you decide to first of all, start doing that, like as a professor teaching others? And then also, why'd you stop 'cause it was a long time. Well, I always liked teaching.

I I always liked seeing that moment where, like the penny drops with someone and you're like, oh wow, now you now you get it. I I found it's a really cool process. And so for me that combined with computer science, which I've always been interested in, like since a kid, I've always been playing around with computers and programming and just, you know, I thought it was a lot of fun. So for me, it was always clear that I wanted to move into that area.

So for me, it was also completely logical to just OK, so I need to build software and I want to teach you about it. That's what I want to do. So I know my career path, yeah. That's awesome. That's yeah. So that's also how I ended up at Utah University. When I started there, there was a lot of focus on gaming and game development. It was like a whole new bachelor that they were setting up on, teaching people how to build the

games. But it was really not so much about building the games themselves, but more about understanding the concepts behind game development, which are like general computer science concepts actually, when you think about it, right, But you can teach programming with, I don't know, a spreadsheet program or whatever, but you can also teach it by using a game. So that was the whole idea. And so that's how it started there. And at the same time, I was also doing quite a bit of research,

which I I also liked. It kind of address the engineering needs of me. So I did a lot of work with motion capture systems, animated characters, those kind of things. And and so we set up this whole motion capture lab with like these cameras with you know, tracking software and markers and things like that, which was a lot of fun to work with. But yeah, at at some point you

also notice, like, OK, so we're doing this at the university level, but at the same time, you have these companies that are spending like millions and millions on creating like the best setups ever. And I felt like we were not really contributing that much anymore. Might also be that I'm just a bad researcher, right? But. It's a different scale. Yeah, yeah, definitely is, yeah. I can see that.

And and then you also start to wonder like, OK, so I I do this work and I write these papers, but how many people actually read them? And does it have like enough impact and can I do maybe something else that has more impact than doing this? And and so that's also when I sort of focused more on the teaching part of the job. Because if you work as a professor at university, you always have this balance, right, teaching and doing research.

And in a sense, it's kind of problematic because when you want to be good at teaching, you can't spend enough time on doing great research. And if you want to become, like the best researcher ever, then you can't spend a lot of time on becoming a great teacher. So you always have to balance these two. And the problem is that when you try to be good at one thing, you kind of get criticized at the other thing, the other way around.

So it's a in that sense, it's a very stressful environment to work in because you always have these two things that you're doing at the same time. But. You can decide kind of the ratio. Well, it's in a sense, yes, Like most professors, they have like a 5050 ratio. But then if you don't do well on the research end, you get more teaching. And that actually has the opposite effect, kind of because then you have you have to do more teaching, right.

They also call it a teaching load, which I found a very strange term for something that's half of your job. It's supposed to be fun, right? How is that load? No, it's supposed to be fun. So you get a higher teaching load. But that means you can spend even less time on research, which means you can do even less and then you get even more teaching and then you kind of get in this, I don't know, vicious cycle. Yeah, you can't get out of that. Yeah, exactly.

OK, yeah. Did you find yourself kind of in

that loop as well, where you maybe wanted to do more research but you had more teaching load or vice versa? Well, the weird thing was that actually like, well, let's put it this way, the image that a lot of people at university have is that basically research is better than teaching. Like, if you can do more research, that's better, OK. And I had to actually, for myself, the opposite feeling like I enjoy teaching more actually, than doing research.

But it felt kind of like, yeah, I don't know, like a secondary thing to be doing, like, oh, so you're not good at research. OK, so then. Then you do that. So then you just do that. And I didn't really like that that feeling that much, because to me, teaching is actually a much more important job than doing research.

I think it's way more valuable to spread the word about something than just to dive in very deeply into a single technical thing and solve that, even though that can also have huge impact, of course. But still, I find teaching is at least as valuable as research. And that was something that, yeah, drove me to kind of re rethink of it, about OK, am I in the right place here And maybe I should change what I do and do something else for a while. OK.

Timeline wise, when was this? Was it about 10 years ago? Yeah. So I I left university in 2016. OK, so around that time. You might have, you might have,

then kind of see my friend, because I was in high school and I always, I played a lot of video games. I wanted to be a game developer, but then I didn't have, I didn't have the, let's say, math credentials to get into that course. Yeah. So I did information science instead. But one of my friends actually did game development, specifically at the University of Utrecht, and then he would always show like kind of what he had built.

And then in information science, we kind of did both business theory as well as a bit more data science. So I could relate things here and there. But it was always cool to see, like he was very specifically focused on game development. I don't think he does game development now, but I I look back fondly at kind of that that, yeah, experience I guess together with him to see kind of the insights. Yeah, it's in, in a sense, the game development area is very attractive to students because

it's like, oh, game's fun. But then when you actually have to get a job in the game industry, it's a very different story, right? There's a lot of competition and lots of games fail and it's it's a really hard industry to be in, very stressful actually. So a lot of people, they end up going in a different direction in any case. So yeah. Yeah, I think we do the same thing now. Yeah. Which is funny to think about. Yeah, different backgrounds gonna same same, same thing. Yeah.

But then you mentioned you were kind of, let's say, maybe at the end of your line. When it comes to that period at the University of Utrecht, what did you do afterwards? Did you go to a company because of that kind of greater impact? What was the next step there? So for me, I always, I always wanted to start my own company. I had this I think probably kind of romantic view of what that was supposed to be like.

But I also got this realisation for myself like OK, so this is university is maybe not the right place for me anymore And at the same time one of my ex colleagues, so he had was quite successful in creating game companies, had sold a few companies mark overmarks. Maybe you you heard of him, but then I talked with him and I said, yeah, look, I I want to make a switch, right? I want to do something else.

And then we kind of together came up with the idea of, hey, maybe we should start a company and and build something cool because he was also looking for something new. So that's what we decided to do. So it was a very weird thing to do because you go from a completely safe, secure job, right? University is permanent, contract, whatever. Very stable. Nobody expects you to make this move.

You're supposed to do this until the end of I Know Your Career, and making that step, it felt like really naughty. Like you're not supposed to. Do that I'm not supposed to do this is not the game I'm supposed to be playing, right. And I also noticed that with some of my colleagues who were like, oh, really? Are you going to do that? That's like so scary. And what are you going to do if it fails? And like, yeah, I I don't know. Yeah. And of course we did actually

completely fail. But but I actually don't regret it for a moment. It was for me one of the best decisions I took because it really helped me view the world kind of in a in a different way. In a sense, starting a company is not really about the company. It's really a process of self learning and I found this very interesting to discover this, that's you because a company works so differently and especially if you start a new company, there's so many things

you need to learn. You need to do everything yourself because you don't have a team like you know at university. If you want to buy a new computer, well, you have to go to the IT department and they have all kind of processes in place. And then you get hopefully your new computer. But in a company, you go to a website, you buy a computer. That's it, right? So it's nice that you can move that fast. But at the same time, it also means that if you make a mistake, it is actually your

fault. And with when you work in a large organization, you can be like, yeah, you know, that department did something wrong. So it's not my fault or this person did that. So it's not my fault, but at a company it's basically, yeah, it's you. Yeah, so I found that very interesting.

But it also means that you put yourself into a very extreme learning mode because, you know, there's money that's running out and you have to do something, do something useful, make sure that it works and there's limited time and you feel that stress all the time. It's a continuous thing that's always in the back of your mind, so, but that also makes it one of the most interesting and exciting experiences ever.

Yeah, starting a company is a process of self learning. I I I always said I want to start my own company. I still say I want to start my company. The more and more podcast episodes I do, the more it's also out on the Internet. At some point I feel like I have to do that, but it's it's partially for having that ownership. I like having ownership and autonomy to make decisions, and the only reason I haven't started my company is partially fear and risks.

Obviously, all those things your colleagues said to you, it's probably also in your head. It's definitely also in my head. But also I have autonomy and I feel like I can. I can make responsible decisions with the job that I have now. As soon as I lose that, then something is going to irk me and it's either going to be seeking that elsewhere or seeking that or creating kind of my own environment. I feel like and starting out, you never have this vision that,

oh, this is going to fail. I think, I think, I mean, I watch a lot of Shark Tank. Some people say, OK, we start this up and we work towards an acquisition. But still you're building up something and whether that's an acquisition or it goes on for a long, long time, you never expect it to fail. You just now gave, like, a little spoiler alert that it definitely did.

Yeah, I mean, if you start a company, you have to be like ridiculously optimistic about everything because I think the statistic is 90% of start-ups fail. Yeah, that's a hard one. That's a really hard one. So that means that, well, probably it's going to fail, right? And if if you start a company with that idea, well, I'll, I'll come back to that later. But if you start like that, that's not a really good start. You have to be like, OK, this is gonna work.

I'm gonna make this work, but the exception I'm I'm better than the rest of the world, right? And then you learn that it's not the case. That's a hard one also. Yeah, but it's also a very valuable lesson. And I think that's to me is like

an extrapolation of how it works in the, in the university actually, where a lot of the things that you do are related to your ego building. Because you know, if you it already starts in school, right, you get your diploma and so you are, you know, I don't know, engineer and this title, this and this title, it's about you. And at the university that process actually continues. After that you do a PhD, which

is again a personal title. Then you'll become, I don't know, a postdoc, and then an assistant professor or an associate professor or a full professor. It's all about titles, titles, titles. And you are being invited to give keynote talks at conferences and write papers where your name is on it. So it's very much ego driven in a sense.

And that also makes it very easy to forget that it's actually not about you, it's about doing the research or teaching other people so that they can to computer science. And so it's it's really easy to to have like a huge build up your ego and think like, oh, I'm actually really important and it's all about me. Whereas if you have startup company and you fail miserably and you know it's your fault, that does a very good job of removing that ego part that you

built up in the years before. So for me, having a failure was, I feel, a necessary step in order to progress. So that's why I also mentioned that it's really to me a personal learning experience. Yeah, part of the self

development, yeah. Would you say that kind of coming out of university, the titles and maybe your previous experience getting into kind of this educational journey got a bit to your head as well. I mean, you must have seen it with your colleagues as well. Yeah, I mean, I I don't want to like single out colleagues like OK, they also like you.

No, I mean it it's very hard to not let that happen, I think and because everybody around you kind of confirms that idea of how important that is. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. And it definitely effects you for sure, yeah. And I think it also created for myself an environment when I started my first company where I had the idea, yeah, I know, you know, I'm, I'm so good. I'm just gonna do this and do this. So the optimism is important, but it shouldn't come from your

ego. It should come from a true value of the idea that you have and being enthusiastic about that and the impact that you're gonna have with it. So that's for me, a process that I went through for sure. I I can. I mean, right now if you were to tell tell me like I had an ego back then, I would never say that that's the case. You seem so humble with the way you come across and also the little things you're willing to share that I would never say that's the case.

Yeah, I mean, it's actually when you throw it out of the window, the ego. Then you can also talk about it, I feel, because it's not important anymore. I like that. But now, of course, if so, I'm

running now this YouTube channel for two years, and then it's very dangerous to not let that same thing happen again because you're like, oh, people watch my video like 1000 times. So I must be very important. No, no, no, you're not important. It's not about you. Yeah, I like that a lot. Before we get into kind of what you do now, I do want to kind of dive deep into that start up phase that you had. Because from my perspective, I know myself, I'm very stubborn. That's always what I tell

people. It's it's an asset. But it's definitely also a flaw in so far that when I start something and I have a feeling that 100% this is the right thing, this is the right idea, it is going to be so hard if that reality says no, because then I'm going to really try and give it my all to make it succeed.

But at the end, if it's really a no, then you have to realize and be able to let go. And you, I think you must have gone through something similar right together with that colleague or that friend that you started up with. What was the realization that what you created was actually not gonna be successful or not succeeding, and that you had to let go in the end? So the company we started was we

wanted to create a sort of website builder for musicians and the idea was that, well, we would have a website builder and then you could have fans. That would pay a certain monthly amount and they would get access to a limited area of the website where you could post, you know, custom content for them. I don't know what kind of toothbrush you use or, you know, personal stuff that fans like to hear about their favorite artists. OK, so that was the idea.

But we did, I think, a lot of things wrong when we were kind of building that product. The first thing was that we were actually already building the entire product without even having talked to a single potential user. So we thought that we knew what people wanted. It's like the classic mistake if you start a company. So I also went through that. So and because we were both computer scientists, we were very, both very product driven.

So we spent I think 80% of our time, 90% of our time talking about features and technical stuff and building stuff. And you know, that's what we were doing all day without really talking to users. Like, hey, do you actually want a website built like this or maybe talk with fans? Like would you actually be willing to pay a musician and get access to this area of the website? So I think that was for us like the first big mistake that we

made. A second mistake was that we technically speaking didn't do a very good job of building the product. It's it's also a trait of, I feel, many computer scientists that you have the yeah, how do I say it? Yeah, maybe a tendency. Yeah that. So let's say a trait of computer scientists often is that you have a tendency to want to build everything from scratch yourself, because you just like technology and hacking and. It's a fun challenge. It's fun. So you just build everything

from scratch. But that also means that it's going to take a long time and you're not going to be benefiting from insights that other people had when they were building parts of that system already. And that means you just move very slow, you make lots of mistakes. It's going to take a long time and that's problematic. Yeah, that's the road.

So, yeah, exactly. But but so the system we built was actually really complex and also I think we, we didn't really understand some of the technical implications of how you actually set up a web-based system like that. So I mean there's more than just code, right? There's also deployment and where you host it and everything. Yeah. So for us, we spent a lot of time on that and we built a system that was actually not very good, OK?

And then we had the brilliant idea of then also using that system for our own website because we thought, well, we're building a website builder, so we should host our own website using our own website builder. Which technically makes sense. Great idea. Yeah. But it also means that all the bugs and the problems and everything that's now also on your website.

Oh yeah, so this self hosting idea, you know, it's also with some programming languages half that where like Rust is built In Rust for example, I think you can do that, but you you can't do that immediately. You have to start with something that works. If something mature. Yeah. And then if your own thing is mature, then you make the swap. So I think that was the 2nd

issue. So our website was actually not that great because of because of that choice and so so we had, we had built a product, we spent like a ton of time on building it and and we noticed it wasn't really taking off because well we didn't talk with a lot of users before.

So at that point we, you know you start to run off money and you have to think, OK, is this actually something that we're going to continue working on and that's when you have to make a decision and either stop or make a pivot. So that's what we reached, I think, 1 1/2 years into the process. Well, 1 1/2 years into the

process and did you decide to say make a complete switch or did you try and pivot or what? What was your decision there? Yeah. So we still wanted to develop a sort of product like this. So we decided to pivot, OK, And instead of focusing on pop rock musicians, which is what we mainly did until then, we shifted our focus on choirs and singing groups. OK. My Mark, who I was around the company with his his wife was singing in the choir and he had a lot of connections there.

So we thought, hey, that might be a good start. And we also talked then more with choir. So we realized, oh, we maybe should talk with these people and understand what they actually need. So then we made a switch where we went from a website builder, which we realized is a lot of work to do, right? And there are already ton of website bills out there to a

sort of LinkedIn for choirs. So it was a website where you could have your profile as a choir, you could put your concerts there, if you were looking for new singers, you could post a message, things like this. And we had a ticketing system, so you could basically buy tickets and pay them online, which most choirs didn't have at the time. So that was the idea.

And we also made a big change technically where we realised, OK, we can't build everything from scratch, so we have to use existing libraries more and we have to make sure that we build the least ourselves, because every time you build your own thing, you also need right test for it. There's going to be bugs, there's going to be problems. So if you limit that, you have a better chance of survival. So technically speaking, that's second round, that's second platform. We did a lot better.

I can see that, yeah, yeah, but. Still, it didn't work. That's fair, yeah. But I think that had something that was. There were other factors as well. One is that it was COVID, so all the choir concerts were cancelled. Basically so there's nothing. No tickets, there's nothing.

And we also realized that a lot of choirs, they actually liked door to door selling because they're very local communities and so they want to just, you know, ring the doorbell and talk with somebody and then not sell it online. Yeah, not digital components. So there was no yeah or hang like a little notes at the supermarket and then if you're looking for somebody. So it's very local and that makes it harder for a platform like this to survive.

There's such a like, only learning that you would find out when you actually talk to people and they figure out, OK, these these are actually local communities, right? And you talk to each other and people know each other and that's how they find each other rather than going online somewhere and booking like a ticket or something like that.

That's fun, yeah. Yeah. So I think technically speaking we did a lot better with that platform, but we still made the mistake of building it before actually truly understanding what the problem is that we're trying to solve because this is something we could probably have discovered way sooner before we were actually spending any time developing the thing. So we did better, but I think there was still, you know, areas where we didn't do as good of a job. Yeah, I mean it, it really

reflects this whole path. It really reflects kind of the learnings you've had, which is so cool to have. Because coming out of, let's say, university or even your educational career, you think the world works in a certain way. And then you start an organization and then you think, OK, the world works in this way, but it's also within that organization.

So I feel like the more you put yourself out there, the more different perspectives you get, the better you understand of the trade-offs because there's no silver lining, there's no golden path. Otherwise everyone would start a company, they would just figure out how to do so. But it's so context dependent. It depends on your domain, your problem space, your user. And even when you figure all that out, you have the thing of right time, right place, right.

You might have the best product with the the customers. You really understand the problem. You're building the solution and the COVID happens and everything shuts down for a year and a half and you you might be like, well, either pivot or yeah, it's it's really hard to do this. Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm now reading a book I find very interesting. It's called The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Don't know if you've read that, but. It's recommended to me.

Yeah, it's it's really cool. But it it stresses that like most things that are happening in the world, they they're not under a Gaussian bell curve. You know it's that's not how the world works. And most of the things that that happen are actually controlled by these kind of really weird events that are incredibly hard to predict.

So you can make predictions for the next year or the next two years, but it's probably not going to come through because there's there's no way you can predict all these very well in fundamentally unpredictable things.

So, and I feel like if you start a company, you're very much in the middle of that because you take decisions everyday about what you're going to do, what your strategy is going to be and these unpredictable things happen and you need to adjust and the the challenges like doing it in such a way that the predictions that you make, you don't overestimates your own precision and you always built in, yeah, some leeway.

And assuming that, OK, this is a prediction, it's probably not going to happen, but we need something in order to take decisions. Yeah, that's the hard part

because I mean, if you make a decision, you're biased towards thinking that decision is the right one, right? And to some degree you have to believe, if we're talking about a vision, if no one believes the vision, then what's the vision for, basically? And a vision is super powerful if people believe in it, but then if it turns out to be wrong, you have to be flexible enough to let that go. Like, I feel like it's a big cross coming from my side because I've never experienced that.

But I I would like to experience that just because of having talked to many people, you yourself included on the show and off the show about their experiences and it seems like exactly as you say, it's a real good process for learning as well. You learn the fastest probably, if you own all the mistakes and if you're in control. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can highly recommend it. And I mean, the stupid thing is like the fear of not doing it comes from not having job

security. But the question is whether you should really be that concerned about it in if if you live in a Western country or a country where at least you know the economy is going well, there is. There are often at least some level of protection mechanisms. I mean, you're most probably not going to run out of food and die of hunger and thirst, right? And a lot of the fears are based on that very biological thing of Oh my goodness, I I won't have a home anymore, I won't have food.

I. Yeah, I need to survive. Yeah, it's it's survival instinct. But it's it makes sense if you're a hunter gatherer and yeah, of course you need to survive and. But in our current world, it actually doesn't serve us at all to have that intuition. Yeah. And it means you need to work to get out of that. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. I wonder if that's holding me back. And it's also probably comfort and risk.

It's a lot of factors, yeah. But it could be that that's the factor that's holding me back cuz job security and let's say the same quality of life that that is I think what's holding me back, letting go of that or or it's not really a decision to let go of that, but it's a risk and if you're risk averse, you will not take that risk or you'll postpone it, I feel like. Yeah. I mean in the end if you look at a company as a profit making machine, it's way more than

that. But if you just look at it from profit making machine kind of perspective, then you can't make profit if you don't take risk. That's true. You need to take some level of risk, yeah. And you need to be and you need to be OK with that. Yeah, yeah. And as yeah, it's going to take a long time sometimes or even getting used to I guess. But now we've we've gone through let's say your entrepreneurial

journey and I know it, that's not where it ends because right now you step back into that more so educational role. I would say educating others with just by virtue of content creation, which I think is a is a really cool and fascinating model. I think we need that. I think people are looking for quality content, but you didn't really. Did you start with that in mind? That that this is a problem that you could solve? Or how'd you get into the content creation space?

So what actually happened is that this pivot to the choir platform didn't really work well. I mean, in a sense the platform did well, but it was very hard to sustain a company based on that. So I decided OK, I should reduce costs so I'm going to do teaching part time again. So I went back to the university and I did teaching only. So I just I taught several bachelor level courses again which for me was totally fine because I enjoyed teaching was so was no problem.

And at the time we we had a software design course and we noticed that Python was really gained a lot of popularity. So there was a version of this software design course for the regular computer science students and the information science students and the information science students.

For them having a Python version of this course would be very helpful because they will typically you know do data science or write smaller automation scripts or do those things that are more closely related to business processes. So we decided to change that course from I think it was C# to Python And that's what I did. So I modified the entire structure and made Python examples.

But while I was doing that I looked online for, you know, examples for design patterns and things like this and I noticed there was very little information available. Actually it was mostly very beginner focused. So learn Python in, I don't know, three hours the basics of Python or it was very recipe based.

How do you do this very specific thing step by step and at the same time you notice that people have trouble with writing more complicated scripts, Because even if you just you write a simple Python script, things can get complex. Pretty soon you know you have libraries like numpy and or. If you do machine learning and use different models, you need to modify the data and everything so it's it can get

quite complex. If you introduce that level of complexity in your scripts, you need to think a bit how you're going to structure it, how you're going to design it, and there was very little content out there. So I try to structure the course more around this. And of course because I had all these failures with all these

different platforms. What was very interesting is that I actually developed a sort of 6th sense of basically always having the assumption that OK, this is going to fail anyway. So how can I write the code in such a way so that I can most effectively throw it in the trash and then pivot to something else? Which in the end, when you think about this, actually what software design's all about,

right? You want to decouple things so you can easily replace stuff or make functions, classes really small so that you can easily work on them and so the the whole ideas of software design that I learned from building these platforms, I could more or less directly translate into the content for the course. Beautiful. So that's how I started. And I so I created because it was COVID time. We did that all online.

I created videos for that, which I posted on YouTube because, well, that was like the easiest platform to use for posting video content. Yeah. And then I realized, like, hey, I actually like doing this. This is actually fun. And there's so much you can do with video that's that's, you know, overlays and animations and transitions. And so I really thought, OK, this is cool, I'm gonna experiment with this. And so that's kind of how it all started. So then I started. I bought a camera.

It wasn't even necessary, but you know, it makes it more fun to actually have a good camera. So I bought the camera and then I started posting videos basically about that same topic, taking things that I learned from my previous start-ups and applying them to Python And posting videos about it. So that's how the channel started.

I like that. And initially, yeah, of course you get like, I don't know, 5 views or something on the video. But then I saw there was a Reddit community on Python, which was quite big. So I started posting my videos there. And then also initially you get like lots of criticism, like, why is this a video? Who is this guy? Who are you? You are nobody. And I I don't watch videos, I only want to read blog posts. So yeah, you kind of have to go

through that I guess. But then at some point, a few months in, so every week, I basically did the video posted on Reddit, got all the crap over me. But then at some point, there was one video where I was covering. I think it was one of the design patterns. And that one actually, yeah, went viral on Reddit and was at the top of the Python subreddit

for like a week or something. And people were discussing about it. And suddenly I had like over 1000 subscribers, and that's really when the channel started to take off. That's awesome, Yeah.

I I like that you said that you you had kind of a touch and go based approach on this. You even said I wanted to experiment with this, right? See if I first of all enjoy it and see if it also gains traction. And from the educational perspective, YouTube is phenomenal, right? Because at you physically there's only such a skill you can educate people with just by having this kind of physical presence that is needed.

Plus videos allows you to edit the content to then streamline the whole process and make it I would say not perfect but near perfect where it would actually land and when you would have let's say that quarter dropping in people's heads more and more often and people even have the replayability, right, because if you educate people in person. I've, I've gone to university it's three years now. I don't have a single video that I can fall back on and beat that caught.

This is where I learned that and so and so or let me let me refresh my memory here and there. YouTube allows for all of that. And the fact that the kind of Reddit community also embraced a a new stream of education, I think it's phenomenal because just like with the choir examples, physical communities are there, but digital communities are even more so prevalent now. And especially in software, right.

People are always trying to Google and always trying to educate themselves, whether they're in university or whether they're in an organization. Their educational journey never really stops when you're kind of in tech in this digital space adjacent to creating software. So then that that education is always going to be valuable there, I feel like.

Yeah, and especially if you think about how you learn nowadays, at least in my case, it's, you know, you go on YouTube or you you look it up and and Google something and then you find a blog post about that's how you learn. And the whole idea of that you have to be physically present somewhere to learn something. Yeah, it's not how people learn anymore. And to me, that also makes YouTube such a great place to be part of, you know, because, yeah, you have the whole video aspect of it.

There's also the community of people. And YouTube's algorithm actively pushes your content so that it finds people who you can help. Yeah. And I think that's like a really cool thing. Yeah, yeah, I see that. When we talked about ego, let's

say earlier, you also mentioned that with YouTube, you have to really work on not letting everything go to your head. And I recognize that 100%. One of the first things I thought about was, OK, YouTube only gets monetized. If you have 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time that is like the and I'm on a lot of new YouTube subreddits that is like the the milestone that people have and I me too. I would be like we're almost there, Roma. And then you would hit 1000 subscribers.

For me, it was the subscribers before the watch time and I'd be like now it's the watch time and it would be something I always kind of looked at. And then when it was achieved, I did kind of feel that void because I was like what now? And then I had to learn to just let go and have fun making videos. But that was the whole process for me. Did you go kind of a similar experience there? Yeah, it's very recognizable. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I think like subscribers and likes and things like that, they're very well, likes, maybe less so. But subscribers for sure, they're fantasy metrics. It's it doesn't really save that much and in the beginning I was everyday like looking at YouTube analytics and looking at the views and the subscribers and it's very interesting but also you realize OK I I also have to just get on with doing content you. Have to do stuff.

Yeah. I mean it's insightful in the sense these analytics in that they help you understand better what an audience likes and what they maybe like less. But in the end, it's still you who has to do the content. It's you know, you can't fake your way out of that. So I I find a comment section in YouTube way more helpful than

the analytic section. Yeah, yeah, me too. That is it. But still that has high highs let's say and also low lows. If someone says who is this guy, What's he talking about? I'm like damn. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I approach it differently nowadays. I noticed that whenever some video of mine gets pushed by the algorithm, I get more negative comments because it reaches a new audience.

So I'm always happy when I see lots of critical comments that bash my videos, because I'm like, oh, so I'm, I'm reaching new people. That's. Great. That's a good insight. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm actually happy when I see negative, yeah. It's I like. I like how you twisted it. That makes sense. We had a short go viral and there was this colleague of mine that basically said every programmer thinks they're the best program in the world.

Now even in that clip, I was like, Are you sure about that? Because I'm imposed to say blah blah blah. And he was, he doubled down and he was explaining that whenever you think you're right from a programming standpoint, you really think you're right. And then you butt heads with people. And that's kind of the stubbornness that people have kind of have to have and also have to let go of. And he says if you didn't realize you're wrong, that was the point he was trying to make.

Then all of that ego comes crumbling down. That was the point. And then people just fixated on the no having impulsive syndrome. Everyone I know hasn't the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who is this guy? You're missing the point. But yeah, it was because of kind of that virality that more people saw it. So that was a funny, funny little bit. Roth and I always laugh about it. Yeah, but like with probably I

started the podcast and I had a colleague that I did it with. But at some point you run it as kind of a one man show, right? From your standpoint also probably the editing, the video recording, figuring out, doing the research and then making it happen. Even the posting was all you. And now I've learned that you actually have a team that helps you with that, an editor even. When did you, let's say, find people to help you along this journey?

Yeah, so indeed, I started doing everything on my own, including the editing and everything. I mean, you have to, right? Nobody else is going to do it for you, so you have no choice. But once I start getting some traction, that was after the first video went viral on Reddit. That was also around the time that I was monetizing my

channel. So of course it doesn't bring in like tons of money, but what I could do at that point was get an editor and basically hand off the editing work, because I really noticed that in particular the editing, though I liked it was fun. It also took a lot of time. And so for me that was like the most important thing to hand off first, so to speak. And by doing that, I created the time for myself to do things that were let's say a bit more

long term strategic. So one thing I noticed in those months that my video started to take off is that a lot of people ask me like hey, can you do a more, you know, in depth course or program because I wanna learn more about this stuff. And so I thought, yeah, I could, I could do that. And I was looking into like on my course platform. So we have some of these platforms that host everything, like Udemy or Coursera. Coursera, exactly. But you can also host it yourself using, I don't know,

teachable kajabi. There's a couple of these platforms out there. And so I had to. I thought, OK, I could do that. I could create a course and then I don't know, I have to figure out how to host it. But in order to create the space for me to do that, I couldn't continue doing these videos and editing and everything because at the same time I was still, you know, I was doing part time teaching and I was working on a new idea with my colleague.

So I had to create time for myself to actually to be able to create an online course. And that's when I handed off the editing work. So that was like the very first step. So basically I took the money that I made from advertising and some sponsorships. I did very little sponsorships at that time. I could basically pay the editor for that. Perfect. Yeah. And and that's kind of how that started.

So then I think that was, yeah, so that when that happened, the monetization handing off editing work, that was somewhere in June, I think 2021, if I'm remembering that correctly. It's been a while. And it gave me time to then develop a course on software design. So that's what I did. I created the software designer mindset and I launched that in December of that same year. Yeah, and that's when it really took off. Yeah, you can see that, Yeah. For me, the I've gone kind of

throughout the same path, also having the responsibilities of editing, finding people, recording. Obviously the robot always helped me, but before I got him in to edit the episodes, I was doing it all by myself. And then to offload that and have someone else do it for me, that was like, OK, I know this process by heart. It it took a while and a little bit of friction to get used to someone else having, let's say skin in the game and doing that

as well. And a lot of learning and also being able to let go and be like, OK, someone else is doing that now, I don't have to jump in. Did you have that same experience? Because this is kind of you built it up from scratch and then someone else comes in and also helps you do that, but it

takes a while if you like. Yeah, I mean, you have a very particular idea of how you want things to look and how you want things to be. So it took me quite some time to find the right fit for me, actually. So I worked with a few editors in the beginning and, well, you know, they did the job, but it wasn't really in terms of style what I was looking for. So in the end, I I ended up with someone that I really, I'm very happy with who work really well

together. And he also kind of intuitively understands now how to edit the videos. And that's just so incredibly valuable. Yeah, that's the best. But it's a process for sure. Yeah, when the, let's say the experience with the previous editors delivered a video to you, would you still then publish it even though you were like I maybe would have done something different or the look and feel you would have not really agreed with here and there?

Well, I mean what we typically do is that we'd have more back and forths, so more changes and more things to be fixed or I would sometimes do still somewhere myself because I felt like OK, I wanted to be like this so. It's recognizable. Yeah, yeah. If you're a control freak, then that's what you do basically. But yeah, so in the end, that's how I still end up publishing

most of these videos. And I mean also frankly speaking, like if you do screencast about software development, you know it's not that important that everything is flashy and animated, then whatever. As long as the code is easy to read and the explanation works, then most people think it's OK. So I think the bar is not as high, which is also why I managed to do it myself in the beginning. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, I saw, I, I told you before the show, I saw the latest few videos. The editing. I I love the editing. Maybe it's my eye, Raul's eye. Oh, we looked at it and we were like, this. This is legit. Thank you. Yeah, I I also really like how we progressed and learned so many things about how to do YouTube videos. And yeah, that's definitely has changed a lot and how we work. Yeah, it's always going to be a learning journey. Yeah.

One of the things I one of my last thoughts I still had was your explanation of kind of your entrepreneurial journey. You really took those learnings with you and you applied them even in your educational journey afterwards, let's say when you saw. OK. Just by virtue of having created this complex system which didn't really work, you set up your software in a different way, right? Decoupled and smaller.

So you can interchange and adapt and you take things off the shelf so you don't have to build everything yourself, right? Those are learnings of total cost of ownership and those are all experience based. I feel like you can. You can listen to people or read a book and have the theory, but some stuff just really lands when you have that experience.

Now that you've gone back to, let's say, the educational side where you're educating others, do you have this feeling that you might lose touch of what it takes to kind of create great software because you need experience to also be able to educate, I feel like. Yeah, we're very aware of that. And I find it really important to avoid me becoming just the person to talk about software without actually coding myself.

Yeah. So what we're always trying to do is find this really nice cycle of content and development, because actually what's nice about doing YouTube content or online courses is that you also need all sorts of tools, right? So we now have in our team somebody that's basically full time working on automation, just connecting platforms because you end up using so many platforms. We use obviously YouTube, but also LinkedIn, Twitter X, Facebook, Instagram, the accounting tool that we use.

We have a payment provider. We have notion which we use for all our internal processes and documents. We used to for adding captions to YouTube and that's like half of it. So we use like 20-30 different tools that all need to be connected and you need to write software in order to do that. And Python is a great way of doing that. So we write a lot of Python code ourself and then we can also create content about that experience. Yeah, Beautiful. Yeah. So that really works.

And a second thing that we're doing is that we're developing a platform called Learn Tail, which is an AI tool that you can put, It's a website, you can paste a link to another website there or YouTube video or just some text and can create learning content for you using AI. And that's also something that we're building sort of for the audience, like, hey, if you watch, you can just watch my YouTube video, but then you can also do a quiz about it and it's

generated automatically. But by building that you also learn again a lot about building software as a service platforms and you can do content about that. Now recently I've been looking more into the Rust programming language, which is really more a systems low level language, which I also find very interesting. So I'm now creating a tool that we can use for video production that like moves around Final Cut profiles and sets the

directories correctly. And we can share like a project with my video editor who's in Hungary, Fiat did report Story. So now we're building a command line tool for that and we can do content about that. So we always try to think of, OK, so we're building these tools and these things and we're learning things from that. And we always want to also create content about what we learned. And that's like the cycle that we try to optimize. Yeah, I think that's the that's the best, right?

It's not just research and education. With software. You need that practical experience. Just by having found kind of things within your own process or ideas you want to execute on. Trying that out, having the room to do so and learning from those and then sharing them. That's a great circle to then be part of. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and and a lot of doing. Content means that you're also forced to not make the mistake of building a ton of stuff that you know nobody wants. In parts we're building the things that we need internally, so that's it's definitely solves a need. But also at the same time, because you get so much feedback on on the videos that you produce that you can also use that feedback to know what you

need to create next. Yeah, so we have this whole system in place now where we basically people can comment on my videos like hey, can I do a video about, I don't know, Streamlit or any other Python app or anything else. What we now built is an automation that uses AI to

classify the comments. And if somebody asked for a video, we then create a card in Notion with our video suggestions using an API call and then so we collect a lot of feedback automatically from our audience that way and then that basically determines what we're going to do videos about. That's genius. Yeah, that's really cool. Like community driven video content ideas? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Because I feel like if it if it were to all come from your side, it would be a lot.

And sometimes you might feel burnt out or video ideas or you might be like, oh, I don't really want to do this, but I have to. But now that it's a community and you know people want this, that is such a good motivator also to then create them, I think that's genius. Yeah, I mean, you still, like, have to also address your creative side, of course. Sometimes I'm just like, hey, I want to do a video about that. Let's do it.

Let's do it right? So I don't always listen to my audience, but I try to at least roughly follow what I see people are asking for. Yeah. And I think that's also a big part of why do YouTube channel works. We just try to do videos that you actually want. It's the community. Yeah. It's the whole community aspect. Yeah. I've really enjoyed this

conversation. Arian, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all the high highs and the low lows, even the learnings involved. I really appreciate it. It was such a pleasure being. It was really great and yeah, lovely. Awesome. Then I'm going to round it off. Thank you so much for listening. I'm going to put all Ariana's socials and as YouTube channel in the comments below, check them out, let them know you came

from our show. And with that being said, we'll see you on the next one beyond coding.