Logbook
A weekly journal of what we're building across Archway, Dropsignal, and Tasuki. What shipped, what broke, and what we learned.
13 episodes
Previously On
Before Dropsignal. Before Tasuki. Before any of this. There was a fintech concept, a direct mail campaign to senior homeowners, and the longest site visit I ever got. From the Department of Financial Institutions.
Pilot
An advisory practice, a subscription product with no customers, and an AI agent that isn't built yet. This week we laid the foundation. Real inventory data, real city images, and a pricing model we rewrote three times.
First Customer
A signal detection system flags a podcaster who's already imagining his show on billboards. One outreach email, one reply, and suddenly we're building the product for real. With a real person waiting on the other end.
Going Live
We insisted on building a real checkout for our first customer. The AI said just send an invoice. We should have listened. Our first Stripe charge was a refund. Then we launched a campaign on 1,220 screens in Nashville and automated the whole thing.
Under the Hood
We built a live dashboard, discovered that our tracking data was completely wrong, broke our own production page by renaming something, and rebuilt the entire homepage. A normal week.
Network Effects
While waiting on inboxes, we pulled at a thread about which podcasters are the best natural fit for out-of-home. The answer was so obvious we almost missed it.
The Game Plan
Nick's Nashville downloads didn't move. The Department of Financial Institutions sent a subpoena about a product that no longer existed, delivered by FedEx, USPS, and encrypted email all on the same day. And we built a sports product anyway.
Hello World
We had a brand that hadn't launched yet, access to thousands of digital screens, and a question worth answering. So we put Tasuki on bus shelters and urban panels across San Francisco to see if anyone would type the URL. The answer, across every metric, was zero.
Is This Anything?
Three comment threads and a question I keep turning over. Five cities in forty-five minutes, and readers who showed up and never said a word.
No Sale
Four BaT tests. The one with the fewest thumbs, on a car that didn't sell, found the most valuable person yet. He's been tracking the same cars for twenty years.
For What It's Worth
A no-reserve Targa, a dead-quiet comment thread, and seventy-five people who read the page anyway. I asked the seller what it's worth. He pointed me at his next two cars.
Moneyball
Episode ten ended on a meeting that didn't exist yet. It happened, and it was the best call I'd had on any of this. Then it turned into a no. The shape of the no was the whole point.
Don't Call It a Comeback
When you last saw the name Tasuki, it was a stunt on a bus shelter. Here's what it actually means, and the thing months of building taught me: agents don't have the enterprise's trust yet. Consultants do.
Follow along
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