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Matt Mazur

Matt Mazur
2024 Year in Review At the end of 2022 I wrapped up my contract work with Help Scout and took the plunge to work on my...
a month ago
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a month ago
At the end of 2022 I wrapped up my contract work with Help Scout and took the plunge to work on my indie software businesses full time. I’m now two years into that adventure, and wanted to share a periodic update about how things are going. Preceden on the Back Burner I made 32...
Matt Mazur
It’s Time to Build It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few updates about what I’ve been up to. Quick recap At the start of 2023 I quit consulting to go full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker, after growing it on … Continue reading...
Matt Mazur
My Indie SaaS Revenue has Grown 37% per Year for 13 Years Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker...
a year ago
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a year ago
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. Even if they were remarkable – which they are not really – I just don’t think there are many good reasons to publicly share revenue numbers, and there are lots of downsides....
Matt Mazur
Is the ChatGPT API Refusing to Summarize Academic Papers? Not so fast. Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API...
a year ago
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a year ago
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API indicating that it was refusing to summarize arXiv papers: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the perceived decrease in the quality of ChatGPT’s responses and seeing...
Matt Mazur
Reflecting on My First Year as a Full Time Indie Founder At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13...
a year ago
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a year ago
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13 years of working on it on the side. A year has passed, so I wanted to share an update on how things are going and some lessons learned. Preceden My main focus in 2023 was building AI...
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 7B Instruct on a Macbook Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to...
a year ago
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a year ago
Similar to yesterday’s post on running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model, I wanted to document the steps I took to run Mistral’s 7B-Instruct-v0.2 model on a Mac for anyone else interested in playing around with it. Unlike yesterday’s post though, this 7B Instruct...
Matt Mazur
Running Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts on a Macbook Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my...
a year ago
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a year ago
Below are the steps I used to get Mistral 8x7Bs Mixture of Experts (MOE) model running locally on my Macbook (with its Apple M2 chip and 24 GB of memory). Here’s a great overview of the model for anyone interested in learning more. Short version: The Mistral “Mixtral” 8x7B 32k...
Matt Mazur
Emergent Mind in The Atlantic One of the many people who saw the incorrect Google Quick Answer about Kenya was an editor at The...
a year ago
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a year ago
One of the many people who saw the incorrect Google Quick Answer about Kenya was an editor at The Atlantic who asked Caroline Mimbs Nyce, one of their reporters, to look into it. Caroline interviewed me for the article they just published which focused on the challenges Google is...
Matt Mazur
Exploring ChatGPT’s Knowledge Cutoff A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what...
a year ago
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a year ago
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what ChatGPT’s knowledge cutoff date actually is. It seems like it should be straightforward enough to figure out (just ask it), but it can be confusing due to ChatGPT’s inconsistent answers...
Matt Mazur
Experimenting with GPT-4 Turbo’s JSON mode One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for...
a year ago
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a year ago
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for generating valid JSON output. From the JSON mode docs: A common way to use Chat Completions is to instruct the model to always return JSON in some format that makes sense for your use case,...
Matt Mazur
The Kenya Quick Answer Goes Viral, Again On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot...
a year ago
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a year ago
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot of the now-famous “african country that starts with k” Google Quick Answer, which quickly went viral, garnering over 82k likes and 3 million views as of the time of this writing...
Matt Mazur
Preceden’s Spam Problem Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS...
a year ago
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a year ago
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I’m honestly surprised it took spammers so long: Preceden is a freemium product (meaning people can sign up and try it for free), the product makes it very easy to...
Matt Mazur
Sharing small, incremental updates with users I use a service called Headway to keep Preceden users informed about updates to the product. Headway...
a year ago
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a year ago
I use a service called Headway to keep Preceden users informed about updates to the product. Headway provides a widget I have installed on Preceden to let users know when there have been updates. Users will see a bell with a count of unread items (which Headway keeps track of in...
Matt Mazur
“Monthly Billed Annually” is Cursed Copy There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS...
a year ago
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a year ago
There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS for not refunding an accidental annual payment he made on their service. He intended to purchase the monthly plan, but due to an unclear UI and poor copy, he unintentionally...
Matt Mazur
Screw it, I’m Keeping Emergent Mind A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I...
a year ago
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a year ago
A few months ago I announced I was going to try to sell Emergent Mind, my AI news aggregator, so I could focus on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker. I wound up having a lot of discussions with potential buyers, but in the end the offers I received were either too low to be worth...
Matt Mazur
Redesigning Preceden’s Pricing Page Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page....
a year ago
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a year ago
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page. Here’s the previous above-the-fold content: And here’s how the new design turned out: Few things to highlight: Very happy with how it turned out. Kudus to Milan for suggesting we...
Matt Mazur
When LTD Purchasers Meet an Inactive User Policy Last year I participated in a Lifetime Deal (LTD) promotion to offer Preceden to the AppSumo...
a year ago
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a year ago
Last year I participated in a Lifetime Deal (LTD) promotion to offer Preceden to the AppSumo community. Maybe I’ll dive into my experience there in another post, but I wanted to share an interesting thing that’s happening now, a year after the deal ended. AppSumo has a policy...
Matt Mazur
The Security Questionnaire Dilemma About once a year I get an email from someone working in a security and compliance department at a...
a year ago
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a year ago
About once a year I get an email from someone working in a security and compliance department at a large organization asking that I fill out a detailed security questionnaire to help them assess the risk of their employees using Preceden. I received one recently from a large,...
Matt Mazur
When you ship a major bug before signing off for the day For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help...
a year ago
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a year ago
For better or worse, I still handle all of Preceden’s support requests. At one I did have help (thanks Liesl!), but these days support takes at most an hour per week, and all requests fall into two buckets: As a result, there hasn’t been a pressing need to outsource support. But...
Matt Mazur
Don’t Self Host Unlicensed Proxima Nova Fonts I’m a big fan of the Proxima Nova font and have been using it on Preceden for years: For a long time...
a year ago
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a year ago
I’m a big fan of the Proxima Nova font and have been using it on Preceden for years: For a long time I was loading Proxima Nova on Preceden via Typekit (a hosted web font service) for $49.99/year, but at some point I decided to self-host it to avoid the third party request which...
Matt Mazur
Emergent Mind finally went viral Last week, the Twitter account Everything Out of Context posted a screenshot showing Google’s...
a year ago
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a year ago
Last week, the Twitter account Everything Out of Context posted a screenshot showing Google’s incorrect response to the search query “country in africa that starts with k”: The tweet went viral, garnering over 133k likes, 6k retweets, and 1k replies. Someone eventually tagged me...
Matt Mazur
Introducing Preceden’s new AI-Powered Timeline Generator For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for...
a year ago
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a year ago
For the past few months I’ve been heads down building an AI-powered timeline generator tool for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker software: The tool – which is free to use and available on Preceden’s homepage – lets you type in a topic or detailed description of a timeline and it...
Matt Mazur
Looking to sell Emergent Mind I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site...
a year ago
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a year ago
I currently have two products: Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker, and Emergent Mind, an AI news site and newsletter. Emergent Mind began last December as LearnGPT, a ChatGPT examples site, and I later renamed it to Emergent Mind and transitioned it the news site that it is today:...
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: Month 5 Update At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline...
a year ago
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a year ago
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I also started working on a new side project, Emergent Mind, an AI-powered AI news site. My last update on how things were going was after 3 months which provides more...
Matt Mazur
Full Time Indie Hacking: First 3 Months in Review At the end of 2022 I stopped contracting at Help Scout to focus full time on Preceden, a SaaS...
a year ago
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a year ago
At the end of 2022 I stopped contracting at Help Scout to focus full time on Preceden, a SaaS timeline maker tool that I had been running mostly as a side project since 2010. It’s April now so I figured I’d share an update on how things are going. My periodic Friday updates cover...
Matt Mazur
Progress on TimelineGPT, Emergent Mind missteps, finding balance Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s...
a year ago
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a year ago
Hey all 👋! It’s been a minute since my last post (for reasons I’ll get into below) so here’s periodic update on what I’ve been up to: TimelineGPT About two months ago I launched an in-app tool for Preceden that provides GPT-powered event suggestions to users to help them build...
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Smart Icons, Automatic Suggestions, Dealing with Spammers, Better Icon Colors Preceden Lots of updates to Preceden this week: Improving the UX for the AI Suggestions When we...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Preceden Lots of updates to Preceden this week: Improving the UX for the AI Suggestions When we rolled out the AI Suggestions feature last week, the typical experience for the user would go something like this: Lots of UX issues there though: To remedy this, I updated Preceden to...
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Shipping AI Suggestions in Preceden, EmergentMind Growth and Brainstorming Preceden On Tuesday I shipped the v1 of Preceden’s new AI suggestions feature to 10% of new users: I...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Preceden On Tuesday I shipped the v1 of Preceden’s new AI suggestions feature to 10% of new users: I had planned on slowly rolling it out to 100% of users over the course of a week or two, but my OpenAI costs were minimal on Tuesday so on Wednesday I said screw it and just […]
Matt Mazur
Friday Updates: Prepping TimelineGPT for Launch, Viva la EmergentMind Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Preceden This week consisted of Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I getting TimelineGPT (the AI content generator we’re working on) from 80% ready to ship to 98%. Lots of small, boring tasks like: Hopefully can launch the v1 early next week, rolling it out to 25% of users and then...
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is now EmergentMind Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Naming things is hard. Shortly after ChatGPT launched at the end of November, I decided to build a site to share ChatGPT examples and eventually be the home to educational content to help people learn more about GPT. To my surprise, there were a lot of relevant available .com...
Matt Mazur
Turning Down $7k for a Side Project I Announced Two Weeks Ago I was Shutting Down About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
About two weeks ago I announced I was shutting down LearnGPT. After the announcement, I received a lot of interest from people interested in taking it over, so I decided to try to sell it instead of shutting it down. I wound up receiving two offers, one for $6.5k and one for $7k,...
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 2 Recap – TimelineGPT Progress, LearnGPT Decision Time For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
For Martin Luther King weekend my family and I headed to Boone, North Carolina and stayed in a cabin for a few days. We went snow tubing at Beech Mountain while we were there, one of the many ski resorts in the area. As is common on vacations, I spent way too much time thinking...
Matt Mazur
LearnGPT is for sale. Contact me if you’re interested. On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business....
over a year ago
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over a year ago
On Friday I announced that I intended to shut down LearnGPT to focus on Preceden, my main business. I didn’t plan to sell LearnGPT because I didn’t think a month-old, pre-revenue project like this would be able to sell for enough to warrant going through a sale. It’s been three...
Matt Mazur
Indie Hacking Week 1 Recap: Starting TimelineGPT, Ending LearnGPT Today marks the end of my first week of full-time indie hacking. I feel like I’m getting in a good...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Today marks the end of my first week of full-time indie hacking. I feel like I’m getting in a good groove as far as my daily routine, but I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet how much flexibility I have in terms of my daily schedule. For example, I’m still waking up early to […]
Matt Mazur
Going Full Time on My SaaS After 13 Years In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few weeks later by a larger launch on HackerNews: Today – almost 13 years to the day since the initial launch – I’m going full time on it and I couldn’t be more excited. A brief history...
Matt Mazur
AOL Underground Podcast Interview about AOL-Files.com Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Back in 1998 when I was 13 years old I got heavily involved in the AOL hacking scene, originally building add-on software called progs (Revolution, Meridian), publishing code libraries called bas files (Alpha32), and later co-founding AOL-Files.com (where I went by the hacker...
Matt Mazur
Updates: Preceden Trends, Training Help Scout’s New Analytics Engineer, Don’t Look Up, and Ray... Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Preceden Recurring Revenue: In January 2021 I introduced automatically recurring annual plans to Preceden. Prior to that the annual plans did not renew automatically which was an intentional (but bad) choice I had made because most users did not user Preceden for more than a...
Matt Mazur
Nick Kolenda Reviews Preceden Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Nick Kolenda is an author, teacher, and consultant who specializes in the psychology of marketing and related topics like pricing optimization, sales psychology, and website behavior. He’s also happens to be a regular in a poker game I host each week. A few months back he...