Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / From Farm to Mac App Store: How Heberti Built Pinery for Authors
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes, and if anyone's
- 0:03got a filter to get the cat hair off your black shirt, I'll take
- 0:07it. Today's guest is Heberti
- 0:09Almeida, the creator of Pinery, A beautifully simple Mac App for
- 0:13writing and self-publishing books in Markdown.
- 0:15This story starts with a storm in Brazil and a power outage,
- 0:18then zooms out to a life pivot from square engineer in Canada
- 0:22to farmer builder in the mountains of Brazil.
- 0:25Over 7 years Heberti took Pinery from side project to project
- 0:30product and now exports production ready E pub, clean
- 0:33PDFs and static websites. It keeps your work private on
- 0:37the device and it already has more than 600 users with 40
- 0:41paying subscribers just three weeks after launch.
- 0:43At 4999 a year or 599 a month. You will learn how to ship a
- 0:48focus tool without bloat, how to price and defend subscriptions,
- 0:52how to launch with product hunt and organic channels, how to add
- 0:56on device AI proofreading without compromising privacy,
- 1:00and how farm work and tractor time can sharpen product
- 1:04thinking. This is for any hackers, author,
- 1:07founders, product engineers, and anyone who cares about calm
- 1:10tools and creator ownership. Let's get into it.
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- 3:00That's ambient dot US. Aberdeen, how are you?
- 3:19Hey, I'm good. Happy to be here with you today.
- 3:23So excited about it. It's a bit of a cliffhanger
- 3:25because maybe you can break it down for us.
- 3:27But I got a message early this morning like, man, I can't make
- 3:30the pet the the podcast. We have a storm.
- 3:33It knocked out my power. I don't have I I'm at a friends
- 3:35now just so I can message you. So walk us through what
- 3:38happened. Yeah, it was quite less.
- 3:41Two days have been quite busy. There was a storm here in Brazil
- 3:47and then the rain season is starting now and it's as usual
- 3:53when you are in the countryside, powers go out, goes out and, and
- 3:58there was a lot of occurrences and the company was pretty busy.
- 4:03So it's been almost 24 hours without power and it's it was
- 4:07restored this afternoon. Thankful.
- 4:11Incredible. So how now we're going to talk
- 4:14about Pinery, which is this incredible application for
- 4:17authors. I can't wait.
- 4:18But I, I'm just fascinated. How did you find yourself into
- 4:21this small town and a farm in Brazil?
- 4:25Yeah. So I've lived my last, my last
- 4:288, almost nine years in Canada. We we've been living in Canada.
- 4:33We moved out of, of Brazil to live there and I, I worked as a
- 4:38software engineer for, for multiple company, multiple
- 4:41companies there and, and the US, my last four years I was working
- 4:46at Square. I, I guess most people in the US
- 4:50would know Square for the white payment machines and, and
- 4:54restaurants. And so we're there.
- 4:58We're living in a small town, Huntsville, which is it's about
- 5:03two hours and a half, I guess from Toronto.
- 5:08It's what they call cottage country.
- 5:12And it's nice. So pandemic heat and things
- 5:17change a lot for everyone, right?
- 5:19I guess you, everyone knows where they were and how it
- 5:24started when you were in pandemics.
- 5:26And we start thinking about, OK, we're here in Canada with a lot
- 5:33of ice and how can we produce our food here?
- 5:37How can be more sustainable and, and have like food year round?
- 5:43We start thinking about that. And there was a bit of spiritual
- 5:50thing as well. Me and my wife have been praying
- 5:53about this for a long time. And we decided to move to
- 5:57Brazil. So we moved to a farm.
- 6:00It's been almost a year now that we moved and we have, we have
- 6:06been starting to plant now. We did a lot of renovations and
- 6:12building stuff. I, I built everything, the
- 6:14furniture, the white furniture, see behind me, I built the
- 6:17furniture. We're we're studying at
- 6:21greenhouse now, a big greenhouse that's 240 square meters.
- 6:28Yeah. Wow.
- 6:29Yeah. And we're planting, we're also
- 6:31planting grapes and apples and olives.
- 6:37So hopefully in in five years we're gonna harvest a very good
- 6:43olive oil here. Incredible.
- 6:45So are you from Brazil? I am, I am, I'm.
- 6:49I'm born and raised here and I moved to Canada in 2016,
- 6:54seventeen and I was there until last last year, yeah, end of
- 7:01last year. Amazing.
- 7:03That's a heck of a jump, isn't it?
- 7:04From from the jungles of Brazil to the frozen Canada.
- 7:09How was that? Yeah, it's it's quite different,
- 7:13but you get used to it. Like like my family would just
- 7:19get what we have. So we have the winter.
- 7:22OK, let's enjoy it. Let's do some winter sports and
- 7:26just go outside and and do something.
- 7:28So we have been canoeing even the winter like my leaders,
- 7:32Canadian neighbors, they would say who are those crazy guys
- 7:35canoeing in the middle of the winter because the middle of the
- 7:39river wouldn't freeze. So we could we could canoe and
- 7:44we would put the three kids in the canoe and we would go for
- 7:48canoeing. And they were incredible.
- 7:50Was the same so. Tell me about the the spiritual
- 7:55longing for a farm. Were you in prayer?
- 7:58You're just like, Oh dear Lord, it's too cold up here.
- 8:01You got to get us back home. No, actually not I, I was
- 8:06actually pretty happy in Canada and and that was of the
- 8:09spiritual thing. I, I didn't want to come back to
- 8:12Brazil. Not not because Brazil's bad or
- 8:15or anything, it's just that it was like when I moved, you moved
- 8:21to a different country. You're, you're good there.
- 8:23I had we had our house there by the river.
- 8:27It was a very nice area. I had a good job.
- 8:30And but then at some point we start questioning the security
- 8:37and the safety we have and in terms of financial safety,
- 8:41because you could have a lot of money, but if you don't have
- 8:47anywhere to buy food or, or anything, it's just, it's just
- 8:52problematic. And we start thinking about that
- 8:56if we can produce food and producing food in Canada, it's
- 9:00only possible if you have a heated greenhouse, but then you
- 9:04start depending on on gas or natural gas to heat it.
- 9:09And, and a lot of it's just hard, right?
- 9:13In Brazil, things are much better like in terms of weather,
- 9:17because you can grow things year round.
- 9:19Even though where we are now, it's pretty, it's high in the
- 9:23mountains. So it's not very warm like down
- 9:28Sao Paulo or any other city, but we can grow almost anything
- 9:34here. Cool so it was really looking
- 9:38around and just wanting to just produce the food that you eat.
- 9:42You know, I, I suppose I'm trying to think like what kind
- 9:45of food does does do you produce in Toronto?
- 9:48Like snow cones, maybe some spinach.
- 9:53Yeah, actually where we. Lived in an apartment in
- 9:55downtown Toronto right when we moved to Canada.
- 9:59I built a smart greenhouse like kind of on a IKEA shelf so it
- 10:04would control the lights and and then Siri.
- 10:08It was integrated with home kit. So I I would send commands to
- 10:12Siri. It would self water and and
- 10:15trigger sometimes to water. I could grow tomatoes and a
- 10:19bunch of herbs and and things there.
- 10:21It was a fun project to do with kids.
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- 12:32So cool. I I'd love it and
- 12:34congratulations on actualizing your dream.
- 12:36I, I, I think a lot of us have kind of like a, a nostalgic kind
- 12:41of yearning for a, a more rural life.
- 12:46You know, it's just something wonderful.
- 12:48I, I'm, I live in Denver and I've been born and raised in
- 12:52Denver and been, you know, lived in the city my whole life until
- 12:55last June. And we didn't move to a farm,
- 12:58but we moved out to kind of like the foothills, you know, just
- 13:01right before pushing into the Rocky Mountains.
- 13:03If you ever heard of like Red Rocks, we're very close to
- 13:06there, just to probably about 10 miles South there in the
- 13:08foothills. And it's been extraordinary.
- 13:10So, you know, I, I, I'm going to imagine you, you know, growing
- 13:14olive oil or growing olive trees and be inspired by it.
- 13:18Now, now walk us through as you're kind of like
- 13:21transitioning. You have a career, you're a
- 13:23successful product engineer in Canada, in Brazil.
- 13:28How did the idea of Pinery come about?
- 13:30And why don't you explain to the listeners here exactly what
- 13:33Pinery does? Yeah.
- 13:35So Pinery is, is this a self-publishing tool?
- 13:40Basically that's to put it simply.
- 13:43But you write with Markdown, which is nice because all the
- 13:50styles are, it's not like on a regular Word or Microsoft Word
- 13:56that you copy and paste tax T the text and it's just a mess,
- 14:01right? You have to remove the styles
- 14:04and everything. So Markdown is a simple plain
- 14:06text language that you can carry the styles, but it's still a
- 14:10plain text. So a header 1 is defined with a
- 14:14hash. So and then Pinery does it does
- 14:21feel things. Basically you write, it has a
- 14:24focus mode on writing. And then you you can preview
- 14:29real time preview all the change.
- 14:32And also you can design on it. You can customize the design of
- 14:36the book change typography. All the fonts are available in
- 14:40your Mac. You can you can simply change it
- 14:43and customize colors and everything.
- 14:47And then you export production ready books like epub, it will
- 14:52export epub tree, It will export also a PDF, not a PDF for
- 15:00printing yet, but it does export the digital PDF and it can
- 15:06export also static website. So you can host on AWS or
- 15:11something. Yeah.
- 15:14So that's basically what Pionary does.
- 15:18Extraordinary. And it, it, it really is super
- 15:20clean and it, it looks like a very creative space, You know,
- 15:24particularly for creating manuscripts or any kind of like
- 15:28technical writing. I think this could be great
- 15:30largely because it frees you of all the distractions and
- 15:32availabilities, which now, particularly with generative AI,
- 15:35there's so many. I mean, I might spend more time
- 15:39looking for the right tool to create to to create some kind of
- 15:43content than if it would take to just sit down and crank it out.
- 15:48So how did Pinery, how did this kind of come to be?
- 15:51Were you were you working on a novel or would you consider
- 15:56yourself a writer? No, I actually worked for a big
- 16:00publisher in Brazil for five or six years before moving to
- 16:05Canada. Few, I think like 2 years before
- 16:08moving to Canada. I worked on this company and I
- 16:13got to work a lot with books like doing digital publications
- 16:18or, or even physical books. And the publishing process is
- 16:24kind of kind of broken and, and it's very slow.
- 16:28So you write your manuscript on, on Word and then you send to the
- 16:34publisher and, and then they have someone who will look at
- 16:37the text and, and inspect for errors or suggest improvements
- 16:42to your text. And then it's, it's a lot of
- 16:45back and forth. And then they, they keep
- 16:47renaming the file like one final one final 2, like final, final.
- 16:53Once they get to the final, final something, they will send
- 16:57it to the designer and then the designer will, will put it on
- 17:01Indesign, Adobe Indesign. And then Adobe Indesign.
- 17:07They will change the, the layout of the text and everything.
- 17:12So after they do that, they have to send it to the editor again
- 17:16and the editor have to read again.
- 17:18So by now the editor have read this book, I don't know, like at
- 17:25least 5 to 10 times. And then because the layout
- 17:29chase, some text can can wrap around and and they they check
- 17:33for everything. And after that's done then they
- 17:38will publish the book. But with the the the epub
- 17:42version they actually after they do everything they will export
- 17:47epub from Indesign. And this epub will come with a
- 17:51bunch of garbage like styles unnecessary.
- 17:55Even if you do a very good cleaning in your Indesign file,
- 17:59it will come with a lot of things.
- 18:02So you have to open on epub editor or just unzip it, because
- 18:09epub files are just a zip with HTML and CSS basically, right?
- 18:15But then there's this specification and also
- 18:20accessibility to this book that you have to improve.
- 18:24So that's what a lot of people would be doing.
- 18:28And I helped with that process because I built a library for
- 18:33iOS that would sell these books and a lot of the times I would
- 18:37get the epubs at the time was a epub 2.2 and transitioning to
- 18:43epub free. And I build open source library.
- 18:48It was called Folio Reader Kit at the time and it was basically
- 18:54for parsing books and so anyone could build like an iBooks app.
- 19:01So this library became popular at the time.
- 19:05A lot of people use it. A lot of big companies used to
- 19:08embed books in their in their apps.
- 19:13And then after I moved on, I moved to another job after that
- 19:20company. But I, I kept thinking about
- 19:24improving this printing process and, and even producing books in
- 19:30a faster way. And after I moved to Canada,
- 19:36actually I, I started working in on pioneering.
- 19:40So it, it took me a few years to launch it, I guess.
- 19:45I guess like almost, yeah, at least seven years working on
- 19:49pioneering. But it was a side project.
- 19:51It wasn't a full time job, right.
- 19:53So every time I have like some like, I don't know, two hours,
- 19:59five hours, I would just say 10 code a little bit and come up
- 20:03with the concept. So from the beginning I wanted
- 20:08to use Markdown. I wanted to have the focus mode
- 20:11and also a preview mode. The design mode was kinda, it
- 20:17was hard to define and get to it, but I finally kind of merged
- 20:21the preview and the design mode. So.
- 20:27It was, yeah, I worked, I worked on Pinery as a side project
- 20:31until until last year when I moved to Brazil.
- 20:37So when we decide to move, I decide to quit my job at Square
- 20:41and and work full time on Pinery and in the farm.
- 20:45So right now Pinery and the farm are my main jobs.
- 20:50Incredible and congratulations, man.
- 20:53It's it's truly a beautiful and elegant product and I love it
- 20:56for its simplicity. It's not trying to be what it's
- 20:59not. And I know how hard it is to to
- 21:03make something simple as kind of counterproductive.
- 21:06That sounds now you could have gone a million different ways to
- 21:10like here's this AI plug in to help you write that your your
- 21:14outlined. Here's this AI plug in to help
- 21:17you tell your story. How did you make the conscious
- 21:20decision to keep AI completely out of it?
- 21:23Oh, I, I, I didn't make like a a decision at the beginning
- 21:29because there was no AI at the time right when I start building
- 21:33pioneering and until recently we didn't have AI as as we have
- 21:38now. But my main concern after.
- 21:42We got AI. Was privacy, because the way I
- 21:47designed binary was I, I worked for a financial company, right?
- 21:52Dealing with a lot of sensitive data and PII, which I didn't
- 21:58want to have that for binary. So I don't want to know who's
- 22:01using binary. I don't want to know who are you
- 22:04and what you're doing in the app, right?
- 22:06And that was how I designed it. And the challenge with AI or
- 22:12Pinery right now was how can I make this privacy 1st?
- 22:18And if I start collecting information like you select a
- 22:22portion of your text and you, you start scanning it with an AI
- 22:27tool, it's gonna, I'm gonna have to upload it to ChatGPT or like
- 22:32open AI servers or Gemini or any other tool, right.
- 22:39So last year Apple came up with the writing tools or the Apple
- 22:44intelligence, right? So I was like, yeah, this sounds
- 22:48like a good approach because I can have on device AI and I did
- 22:55not have to send any of the user data to the cloud or anything.
- 22:59Everything you write stay in your device.
- 23:02If you want, you can sync with iCloud or Dropbox or anything,
- 23:07right? Because it's a file based
- 23:09system. So it works offline.
- 23:13And, and this year with Mac OS26, they actually introduce
- 23:22foundation models, which is, they gave access to the LLMS
- 23:28that we use when you ask like writing tools on Mac to rewrite
- 23:35or proofread some part of the text.
- 23:38And you can actually run prompts and everything on these models
- 23:42and they are all embedded in your device.
- 23:45And they are, they're quite good.
- 23:48So today, actually, after I got the power restored, here I was I
- 23:55was playing I've been playing for a couple weeks now with
- 23:58foundation models and I have I have a good a good
- 24:02implementation, I think for it. The only downside I would say is
- 24:08you have to be running Mac OS26, which is the latest one, right,
- 24:14to have access to that. But then I can proofread suggest
- 24:18improvements. You can by now you can you can
- 24:21proofread your text or you can rewrite with a different tone
- 24:26more friendly. But those are the default tools.
- 24:30And now I'm I'm, I'm writing a more advanced proofreading tool
- 24:36that can integrate things like tax suggestions and things like
- 24:43that. Interesting.
- 24:46You know, I actually really like that it's not integrated
- 24:48directly. You know, I think that's
- 24:50probably what everyone learned at first is like, here's how we
- 24:53can affect the copy that we're doing with AI to make it better,
- 24:58to give it a different tone, to change it from negative to
- 25:00positive, to take all your attitude and sassiness out of
- 25:03your e-mail. Oh, maybe that's just me, but
- 25:06what I like about this is that like ultimately, if you're, if
- 25:10you're writing something that's beyond an e-mail, if you're, if
- 25:13you want to public publish A blog, you want to publish a book
- 25:17for sure. Obviously, even like a menu, at
- 25:20some point you're going to have to sit down, really read it and
- 25:23really go through every single thing that the AI generated or,
- 25:27or helped you with. You know, so it's having like
- 25:29the complete not having the tool set to just be like, just scan
- 25:34it with him, with Claude or whatever, be like, no, we're
- 25:37going to go into a very simple user application and just read
- 25:42it and edit it. Because ultimately, you know,
- 25:44that's what's going to give it the special sauce.
- 25:46You know, I love the LLMS for giving me the ability to write
- 25:51at least with clarity for once, you know?
- 25:54I, I I'm more. A poetic writer.
- 25:58So I'm going to use alliteration and rhyming and when it's not
- 26:01appropriate and it'll just take that out like I know what you're
- 26:04trying to say. Let me make it really crystal
- 26:06clear. So once you have a structure
- 26:08that's very clear, but then I want to punch it up.
- 26:10I want to give it that Ryan Estes feeling, you know, but I
- 26:14want to do that independently. So like, I like the fact that
- 26:16it's not now, of course, there's a bunch of cool ways that you
- 26:19could enhance it, which are awesome, but you know, it kind
- 26:22of goes along with the the this kind of saying that's been
- 26:27popping up for me all the time with AI.
- 26:29It's like, either you're as close to it as you can possibly
- 26:32get, or you're as far away as you can possibly get in between.
- 26:36You're going to get dusted, you know, So if you're you're
- 26:38working on a manuscript through LLMS and you're bring it to a
- 26:41position, that's great. And then you bring it to Pinery
- 26:44because this is where we're going to ultimately do the final
- 26:47human in the loop, you know, edits.
- 26:50So it can so basically give it its its final touch.
- 26:53I love that. Now let's talk about the
- 26:55business model a little bit bit, because it's only available
- 26:58right now at the Mac App Store, totally free, and then there's
- 27:02in app purchases. So how do you get paid from the
- 27:05application that you've been building?
- 27:07Yeah, so this first of all, this is my main income right now,
- 27:13right? I don't have any other income.
- 27:15I quit my job. So I cannot write for just write
- 27:20code for free. So a lot of people question
- 27:23subscription model, but it is by far the best way to sustain
- 27:30software. And the pricing model I went
- 27:35through a lot charge only for updates and you buy a version,
- 27:42but being on the App Store, on the Mac App Store, it limits you
- 27:46a lot because the system is designed for subscriptions.
- 27:50Of course for Apple is also better right?
- 27:52Because they and the long term is better for them.
- 27:57So I decided on a price which I think it's, it's fair for what
- 28:03the software delivers. Let's say if you write a book
- 28:06and you you export a book and you sell this book.
- 28:11If you sell, depending on the book, if you sell one copy of
- 28:14the book, you pay for the subscription of a one year of
- 28:16the software and then it has a monthly, basically a monthly and
- 28:23a yearly payment. Yeah, that's basically what's
- 28:30what's. The the year the annual
- 28:32subscription. So the annual is 4999 and it's
- 28:37great U.S. dollars and and the monthly is 599.
- 28:42Yeah, it's incredible. How did you land at that price
- 28:45point? I look at a bunch of competitors
- 28:49and and software that do similar things.
- 28:53And then I decided, OK, this is gonna be the price.
- 28:58It's, yeah, there's not a lot of science behind it.
- 29:04Just kind of a gut feeling. You're like, yeah, right here.
- 29:10Incredible. OK, how many customers do you
- 29:12have to date? So we have.
- 29:15Right now I have 600 people using the software and there is
- 29:23as of yesterday, there is 40 subscriptions.
- 29:28Amazing. Yeah.
- 29:29So I think it's it's a good rate.
- 29:32I launched the software like 3-3 weeks ago.
- 29:36Yeah, yeah. So a little over three weeks.
- 29:40So it's not even a month for the first month.
- 29:43I'm I'm quite happy with that. Absolutely.
- 29:46What? How did you go about finding
- 29:48your first customers? I launched, I launched on on
- 29:52product hunt as soon as as Apple approved because the Apple
- 29:56approval process for they're very picky for the first time
- 30:01you, you submit the software And I, I've been submitting software
- 30:05to Apple since like 2009. But then I've never submit
- 30:12anything for myself, right? Like it was always something I
- 30:16did, but, well, I was for a big company and then this, it was
- 30:22quite challenging. They they have a lot of
- 30:24requests, especially on the subscription screen.
- 30:30They want everything to be very clear.
- 30:32The way you put their, yeah, they're very picky on that.
- 30:38Yeah, what's what is Apple's cut?
- 30:40Are they taking 30% subscriptions?
- 30:43They. Well, they usually take take 30%
- 30:47but if you if you submit, if, if you open your, your company and
- 30:52your account there and you sign up for this small business
- 30:57program then they will take 15%. So right of their cuts is going
- 31:02to be 15%. Is there kind of like a
- 31:06advertising opportunities in the app?
- 31:08Like what's the best way to drive traffic to to to the to
- 31:13the Mac App Store? Aside from podcast interviews,
- 31:16of course. Actually, I actually thought
- 31:20about ads, but they don't have ads in the Mac App Store.
- 31:24So on iPhone or like iOS App Store you can advertise your
- 31:31app, but on Mac, unfortunately they don't have anything like
- 31:35that. So right now, Private Hunt gave
- 31:39me a lot of traffic and some people start using and posting
- 31:44on newsletters and things like that, like design newsletters
- 31:50and writers newsletters, and that's driving a lot of traffic
- 31:54to the website right now and people are downloading.
- 31:58But that's most I would say right now, 100% is organic.
- 32:04Cool. Yeah, that's amazing.
- 32:05Like what what's what's the plan?
- 32:07What's the marketing kind of go to market to to to bring users
- 32:11on? I mean, obviously, like it's
- 32:13pretty product LED, right? Because that's kind of your
- 32:15sweet spot. And if writers like it, I mean,
- 32:17they start talking on Reddit about it, like then it just
- 32:20starts kind of Catching Fire. Yeah, I actually.
- 32:22Posted that I forgot about that I posted on Reddit.
- 32:25But it, it's, it's kind of scary because people, I don't know,
- 32:30people love it, but they are so mean because of the
- 32:34subscription. They just, they just hate it.
- 32:38And but at the same time, you think, OK, the price, I think
- 32:43the price is fair and people are paying for it.
- 32:46So I don't think the price is wrong.
- 32:50But it's just, yeah, you have to have some guts to go to Reddit.
- 32:56It's better when people start talking about it instead of you
- 33:00posting about it. But yeah.
- 33:02Totally. My started right now I I'm
- 33:06focused on on improving the product and having a very high
- 33:10quality product and the outputs make sure everything is perfect
- 33:15when you export your book. So I have been focused on that.
- 33:19I decided to launch cuz my wife kept kept telling me like you
- 33:25have to launch this thing. You have been working for so
- 33:28long and you're waiting for it to be perfect.
- 33:30It's never going to be perfect. So like I was like, yeah, I'm
- 33:34going to launch it. I think it's quite stable now.
- 33:38And then Apple came up with the Mac OS26, which changed a lot
- 33:44with liquid glass and the new design system.
- 33:47It's not just like a simple change.
- 33:50It required a lot of work. So my last couple weeks I was
- 33:53working on Liquid Glass to adopt the new design system and it
- 33:58changed the UI of the app a little bit.
- 34:00The screenshots you have in the in the website now, they are
- 34:04from Liquid Glass, the new Mac OS design.
- 34:10Amazing. What an incredible story man.
- 34:13I I love it it. It seems like you're living your
- 34:15best dream. Right now, yeah, I am.
- 34:18And it's been it's been quite wild like in the morning I, I
- 34:24wake up early I cod a little bit and then I go go in my tractor
- 34:30and I plough the land and they prepare the soil and then yeah,
- 34:35I've been doing a lot of stuff like very disconnected.
- 34:38So it at least I feel like when I'm coding, I'm 100% right
- 34:47because when you do it full time, I have been doing iOS, Mac
- 34:52OS apps since 2009 basically. And at some point it's just
- 34:59like, I'm kind of tired of doing this, but I like doing this.
- 35:04It's just that it's so stressful.
- 35:07That's where when I was on call, there's like man, payments not
- 35:12working is a nightmare. Printers not printing is the
- 35:16worst nightmare because if if the printer doesn't print your
- 35:21order, you don't get the food. So on calls was like they were a
- 35:27nightmare and, and now it's, it's more balanced because I
- 35:31work on a problem, I fix something, I improve something
- 35:35and then if it's not working, I just, OK, I'm going to finish
- 35:38this later. I go back, go go to the tractor
- 35:41or go do something in the farm And, and then when I come back,
- 35:46I have like fresh mind and it's, it's easier.
- 35:49I I feel that I I have been solving problems way faster even
- 35:54though I'm working less amazing. It's the the the clarity of
- 35:59thought. What, what's on the product road
- 36:01map. You said you want to make big
- 36:02improvements. What are the next 12 months look
- 36:04like for Pinery? Yeah.
- 36:07So the the main thing I've been working now is trying to to
- 36:11implement the the use of foundation models to actually
- 36:17parse your text, understand it and suggest that grammar errors,
- 36:23improvements and and all kinds of syntax syntax improvements.
- 36:29The main challenge with that is you know a like the LLMS are not
- 36:35very precise. It's not always the same output.
- 36:38Sometimes you get some garbage, sometimes you get something
- 36:42really good. So fine tuning the prompt and
- 36:45how to to get a good output. It's been my main challenge now.
- 36:52So that so I plan to have like a foolproof reading tool set for
- 36:59it. And also another thing I have
- 37:03been looking to is exporting an audio book so.
- 37:08But then for that I will need to download the model to the
- 37:13device. So because right now the bundle
- 37:17size of of the app is is pretty small.
- 37:22I I don't remember but I ship it to that store, it's like under
- 37:2730 megabytes. The whole app like everything I
- 37:30don't have, I have almost 0 dependencies on on other
- 37:34libraries. I I do most of the libraries, I
- 37:38have some open source library like Markdown, Syntex which is
- 37:42the open source library that I create for binary and I just
- 37:47open source it for people to use.
- 37:50And I want to do the same with the audio books.
- 37:54So it's going to be another output you export epub that you
- 37:58can export a full audio book file of your book.
- 38:05Cool. Yeah, I mean, there's once you
- 38:07have like the the raw text, the ability to like throw it to 11
- 38:11labs to create an audio book is right there to throw it to, you
- 38:16know, mid journey and do like a little animated like scene or
- 38:21something. It's so cool.
- 38:23But I love where the product is now.
- 38:25Now I got a feeling like what you really want to be doing is
- 38:28having a big farm. So what what's the number?
- 38:32Let's say you build up pinery and somebody offers you a number
- 38:37to buy it and just make you permanently farming.
- 38:40How much is it? Actually, actually never thought
- 38:45about that. I, I would, I, I wouldn't say I
- 38:50will be permanently farming forever, but I, I really love
- 38:56it. I, yeah, I, I I can think about
- 39:01it right now like a number. Yeah, I can think.
- 39:05Million. No million, more or less.
- 39:08Yeah, Yeah. I think, I think it would have
- 39:10to be at least a million. I have been working on this
- 39:12thing for so long, the passion and yeah.
- 39:19Incredible. OK.
- 39:21It's been fantastic. I want to do a couple more
- 39:23questions. With you, if that's OK, take you
- 39:25into the. Lightning round.
- 39:27OK, OK, so. If you're entering college today
- 39:36knowing what you know now, what would you study?
- 39:42That's a good point. I I don't know if I would enter
- 39:45college today with all the knowledge we have available.
- 39:51Like I have been working as a software engineer for, for so
- 39:54long now and, and I have, I work for like big companies in
- 40:00Silicon Valley, but I don't have a software engineering degree.
- 40:05I have a business degree which didn't serve me for a lot of
- 40:10things. So I would just pick on
- 40:14something I really like and do it research.
- 40:18Cuz with the Internet we have so much knowledge right now if you
- 40:22want to build a rocket. In your backyard, it's totally
- 40:25possible. You have so much knowledge
- 40:27nowadays that you can, you can do.
- 40:30So I don't think I would. I would go to a college.
- 40:33That's, that's my, my, my point of view right now.
- 40:37What? Would you do instead?
- 40:39Would you work? Would you start making companies
- 40:41and stuff? Yeah, yeah.
- 40:43Well, right now with the mine I have today, I would, I would go
- 40:47to farming because I think not a lot of people were are producing
- 40:52food like high quality food and we we do need that.
- 40:59So I would go into that. I appreciate.
- 41:03That 'cause I, I'm a hunter, so I, I feel the same way about
- 41:06like kind of providing, you know, you have your own food
- 41:09sources is it's very important, I think, OK, what's something
- 41:15that you know now that you wish you knew earlier?
- 41:23I think, I think all the the experience with software
- 41:29development, I know now it, it makes my life so much easier to
- 41:37to like everything. Like even for me, I, I did like
- 41:42all the Geo referencing of the forum, the mapping and like low
- 41:47level maps with QGIS and all those things.
- 41:52It's, it's just because of my background.
- 41:55So if I knew that before, it would make my life a lot easier
- 42:00on a lot of things I did in the past.
- 42:03You get, I know you're in the high country, but you got some
- 42:05good fishing out there. We do, we have, we actually have
- 42:08a fishing pond. It's a good size, decent size.
- 42:13Yeah. I'm not not a big Fisher, but I
- 42:16I go there with the kids and we have some fun fishing.
- 42:21Nice, cool. How about this one?
- 42:25If you could live in any historic era, time and place,
- 42:29where would it be and when would it be?
- 42:37Yeah, that's a it's a good one. I think I would like to live
- 42:45like in biblical times, right? The early, I think, yeah, there
- 42:52there's a lot of questions I have and things that I I would
- 42:55like to know. But yeah, it's quite wild.
- 43:00Like, like, are we talking about like, like Christ era?
- 43:04Yeah, well. Even before that like more like
- 43:08Abraham era earlier than right because.
- 43:12Yeah, You know, like being in Jerusalem when the the Romans
- 43:16were there seems so scary. You know, the way they're, like
- 43:20crucifying people and they're like, put them on like bikes and
- 43:23into town and just like, oh, man.
- 43:26But yeah, like, like really old, like way back.
- 43:29Yeah. It's really interesting.
- 43:30Like how they live in a tent and then moving around and having
- 43:34like, yeah. They're animals.
- 43:39And yeah, it's, it's really interesting.
- 43:41You know, it's it's cool too, because, you know, I'm a big fan
- 43:44of the Bible, particularly the the Old Testament, just because
- 43:47of the stories are so amazing and three-dimensional and very
- 43:52old and they don't really have dates, you know what I mean?
- 43:55They have some loose dates of when they started to be written
- 43:58down, but they're probably thousands and thousands of years
- 44:01old, just pass down orally, you know, over the dinner table for
- 44:05a long, long time. So, you know, it's, it's
- 44:08fascinating to think back in those times for sure.
- 44:11Yeah, that that it would be. It would be fun.
- 44:16Be fun. Yeah.
- 44:17You know, And I, if I think about it, they're probably doing
- 44:19what I like to do and what you like to do.
- 44:21They're sitting around fishing, doing some farming, hanging out
- 44:24with the families you like. This is great.
- 44:27Yeah. Cool, this has been a fantastic
- 44:32conversation. I really appreciate your time.
- 44:34Where can people find you online and where can people purchase
- 44:37Pinery? Yeah, people can find me on I am
- 44:43on on LinkedIn mostly I I started posting to on Twitter
- 44:48now, but I'm yeah, I I read I mostly reading message more than
- 44:55posting there. I am on Instagram.
- 44:58I post a lot of a lot of the daily farm life stuff on
- 45:04Instagram, mostly in Portuguese though, and then LinkedIn,
- 45:10Twitter, Instagram, yeah, and Pinery.
- 45:14You can find Pinery at Pinery dot app.
- 45:17That's the website. Or you can go to the Mac App
- 45:21Store and just search for binary.
- 45:25Fantastic. Now I'm a Capueta and a jiu
- 45:27jitsu player, so I might have to get down there sometime.
- 45:30I've never been to Brazil, but the way you're talking about it,
- 45:33I got to get down there and see the farm.
- 45:34Yeah, no, if if you come here, you, you definitely have to to
- 45:38come and visit me. We're we're going to set up some
- 45:41Airbnb units here in the farm. So we're going to have space for
- 45:46you to come for sure. All right.
- 45:48You, you, you open that up. I'll be your first customer now.
- 45:51I've been. I heard of a place called
- 45:53Florepa that also people are telling me I need to go to.
- 45:56You ever been there? I've been there.
- 45:58It's really nice. It's really nice, Yeah.
- 46:01So when you're, when you live outside of Brazil, like there's
- 46:05a lot of things people say about Brazil or, or the media say
- 46:10about Brazil, but and then it's just some people are scared to
- 46:14come to Brazil. Like there's there's no reason.
- 46:17Of course, if you go to Rio, which a lot of people go to Rio
- 46:21and they want to go and see the Carnival and everything, of
- 46:25course there is, it's dangerous, right?
- 46:28But there are some very safe areas in Brazil, like where we
- 46:31live here in the South of miniature eyes.
- 46:34It's it's amazing, very safe area.
- 46:37And in the South, I am from the South.
- 46:38So like Floriba is, is a very nice town and, and everything in
- 46:45there in the South there is because there's a lot of
- 46:49European immigration. So they, they have a lot of the
- 46:51European history there when, when the the first settlers
- 46:57came. And yeah, it's, it's just a
- 47:00beautiful area of Brazil. Incredible.
- 47:04Thank you so much for coming on the show and congratulations to
- 47:06all your success. I wish you well man.
- 47:10Yeah. Thank you very much for having
- 47:12me, Ryan, and it's been a pleasure to talk to you.
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