In this episode:
- What Peter and Niklas are each working on right now (Tailwind, OG Kit, Phone.inc)
- Niklas hired his first employee and had to buy a laptop at Denmark's terrible excuse for an Apple Store
- Phone.inc's second paying customer and the challenge of marrying old telco infrastructure with a modern sign-up experience
- Peter's day in Copenhagen (coworking, Laravel meetup, the Royal Library, vibe coding a revenue dashboard)
- The content plan for Still Early going forward (podcast and vlogs)
Peter and Niklas are back for episode two, this time recording remotely from their respective towns. They use this one to properly introduce what they're each working on and catch everyone up on the week.
They start with a quick intro to what they're each working on. Peter works with Tailwind Labs, where the team is building
ui.sh, which is basically trying to figure out how to get AI agents to become good at design. Peter also runs the Tailwind partner program and builds OG Kit on the side, a SaaS tool for dynamic open graph images that he describes as the perfect side project (tiny revenue, but super fun and near to his heart).
Niklas gives the backstory on
Phone.inc. He co-founded Firmafon back in 2009 (now called Relatel), which became the biggest SMB telco in Denmark. Around 10-15% of all Danish businesses use it today. But three things that didn't exist back then have completely changed: apps with built-in IP telephony, global telco infrastructure you don't have to build yourself, and AI that can actually access the contents of phone conversations. Phone.inc is basically Firmafon rebuilt from scratch as an app. The domain was just available, which is kind of unbelievable, and it was honestly the thing that made Peter get excited about the idea.
The big update this week is that Niklas hired his first employee, a designer and product manager named Katrine who he used to manage at Trustpilot. It was his first day having a coworker in over a year, and the onboarding included a pretty rough trip to Denmark's closest thing to an Apple Store where they got the wrong laptop, couldn't get the phone they wanted, and walked out angry. Niklas has a message for Tim Cook.
Phone.inc also got its second paying customer, someone from the waitlist who'd been banging down their door. The biggest challenge right now is negotiating with telephony infrastructure providers who want five days of compliance review before a customer can go live, which doesn't work when the goal is to have people up and running within a minute of signing up. Niklas compares the wow moment they're going for to Square's original product video, where suddenly your phone becomes a payment terminal.
Peter's week included a trip to Copenhagen for the Laravel meetup (which he originally started back in 2014, now run by someone else). He stopped by Niklas' coworking space, bumped into a potential Phone.inc customer on the street, worked from his favorite spot at the Royal Library, helped send out 500+ UI.sh invites, and vibe coded some MRR tracking into Tailwind's internal dashboard. Got home past one, pretty tired.
They also lay out the content plan for Still Early: podcast episodes every other week, vlogs on YouTube in between. They're getting help with editing and trying to keep everything as simple as possible.
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Still Early is sponsored by
Phone.inc: a business phone number, welcome greeting, call routing, and opening hours, all from an app on your personal phone.
