Building a company is hard. We share real, grounded conversations with people doing just that. From solo devs to venture-backed founders. Hosted by Dave Berner (co-founder of Kinde), this podcast skips the playbook talk and gets into what building actually looks like day to day.
Building a company is hard. We share real, grounded conversations with people doing just that. From solo devs to venture-backed founders. Hosted by Dave Berner (co-founder of Kinde), this podcast skips the playbook talk and gets into what building actually looks like day to day.
Kai Forsyth is the founder of Hall, a platform that monitors and optimizes how businesses appear in AI search results across ChatGPT, Claude, and other conversational AI platforms. After working as a product designer at Atlassian, Intercom, and Dovetail, Kai recognized that traditional SEO was being disrupted by AI-powered search. His team made a critical pivot from building community visibility tools to focusing entirely on AI visibility - a decision that transformed their trajectory and time-to-value from months to minutes.
When Google traffic to Kinde suddenly vanished, Dave assumed it was an algorithm change. Turns out, the entire game had shifted - people were searching through ChatGPT instead. In this episode, Kai Forsyth reveals how his team pivoted from building community tools to helping businesses survive the AI search revolution.
He explains:
⬛ Why Reddit and Wikipedia matter more than your company blog for AI visibility
⬛ How to get from idea to paying customers in 2 months with a team of 3
⬛ Why building a "sticky" product in 6 months is impossible
⬛ The counterintuitive approach to support - use engineers
⬛ How engineering can drive growth beyond just building core features
⬛ Why comparison content and listicles are "cringe but crucial" for AI discovery
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:35 - SEO is dead, AI visibility is everything
00:01:34 - How AI search is disrupting traditional SEO
00:04:44 - Reddit suddenly controls your visibility
00:07:13 - The Reddit moderation nightmare for founders
00:10:14 - From community platform to AI visibility: the pivot story
00:12:15 - Why reviews and comparison pages drive AI citations
00:16:10 - Building the MVP in 2 months with 2 engineers
00:20:00 - The agency model: 1 customer becomes 20
00:24:10 - Time to value: from months to minutes
00:27:59 - First customers through targeted LinkedIn outreach
00:31:45 - 20% reply rate: the simple offer that works
00:35:39 - Why no product is sticky if built in 6 months
00:42:47 - Engineering velocity beats product differentiation
00:47:20 - Build free tools for distribution, not just features
00:53:20 - Staying sane in the AI hype cycle
00:58:57 - Balancing founder-led content with product building
01:02:07 - Your baseline AI visibility strategy
01:05:28 - Bonobo and the perfect focus music
01:13:44 - Connect with Kai and try Hall
Follow Kai Forsyth
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaiforsyth/
Website: https://usehall.com/
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LinkedIn: /daveberner
X: @dave_or_dead
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Sponsors
Kinde: https://kinde.com