There is something I'd call Subscription Fatigue. People and businesses are asked to pay subscription fees left and right.
If I convert my bank statements only each quarter in a spike or once or twice a year, why should I pay for each month or the entire year? Of course I don't know the real usage patterns of this application, but that's one scenario I'd think of.
Subscription fatigue is real, and I'm currently going through it, but it's not the existence of subscription-only model which nudges me to cancel a membership.
If I pay for something, I want the tool to work for me. I can't use an application if it tries to steal my attention all the time. An upgrade pop-up there, a reminder notification there, and the application wears me down.
I like quiet applications. It's there. I'll use it. An unobtrusive promo button for a new feature is OK, but constant nudging for the same thing is tiring. Dropbox used to do that with document signatures, they stopped now AFAICS.
If I pay for your application, please be patient and respectful, because the moment I feel that your application is more about getting my money than providing me services, I'm out.
The value I get is in the service you provide via your application. Not the existence of said application, so stop treating your users as cows in line waiting to be milked.
This is another reason I'm self hosting as much as possible. I'm willing to put in the work to maintain an application rather than seeing constant banners and pop-ups wedged in to milk me more.
The perceptive utility of software declines when it is subscription-based in current times. A one-time fee for software is reasonable to a purchaser, renting/leasing software is no longer economical for the size of most phone apps...too little for too much.
> My friends tell me the job is basically managing AI agents and reading Pull Requests. That sounds like hell, and I’ll try to avoid it for as long as possible.
It really is not that bad when you are in a company with a good culture. Leadership is gonna be AI piled everywhere, but imho that's how you learn where to use (and not to use) the technology.
Most places I know that have strict on-premise/air-gap requirements are just investing in on-premise AI and open source harnesses instead. The only ones that don't are the typical places that are slow to adopt technology in general (usually because they can afford to due to historic moat).
I interact with plenty of companies - not a statistically relevant amount, but dozens. I'd put this at about 50% right now. I certainly deal with a not insignificant number of meat proxy CEOs, which is highly annoying for the people worrying about the details. But it's not impossible to work with. I just accept the overhead and hope it gets better.
I disagree. Having to work with the clanker is hell on earth. I'll do it if I have to, because I need to eat, but I hate every second I have to put up with those stupid things.
> Last time I worked at a company was November 2020. I love programming, but I really do not enjoy programming at a company. Things were bad in 2020, but I feel like they’re worse now.
They're much worse now, but that also creates more opportunity than ever before. Chaos truly can be a ladder if you take advantage of it and endure the unhappy parts. Having a bit of savings to work with can make all the difference. You can focus on emerging opportunities without melting down over your next paycheck.
The concept of W-2 employment is completely dead to me now. Especially for this kind of technology work. I charge per outcome now (1099). I am no longer interested in being provided what amounts to hazard pay for the job of interacting with an adult day care center every day. Walking in as a hired gun with no political agenda and a clear mission feels great compared to where I was before. When I do participate in the clients' meetings, I generally get away with murder because I am laser focused on the outcome itself (my compensation) rather than belaboring whatever technical details behind it. If I'm on a call these days, there's an explicit reason for it. The business can sense that I am aligned with their goals, so the proverbial seas tend to be parted whenever I unmute my microphone.
The clients' salaried developers loathe me to the extent that it's creating even more opportunities. The amount of unqualified ego tripping in tech has become astounding and can serve as a powerful ally for humble wizards.
It is not ego tripping. They probably loathe you because you turn the power structures even more in capital's favour by undercutting or overriding them.
Somebody else said most of it, but I'll add a little more. Said developers loathe you because you decimate the thing they care about for your own benefit by being a hired gun of management and doing the killing for them.
I'm surprised some banks don't provide a CSV export for statements, even if some do, they format it a XLSX file with images and meta descriptions in as header
Hang in there. I've yet so see an even modestly successful business that didn't have this or some other bleak problem at one point in time. I'm sure they exist, I just haven't seen one yet :D
My gut says this one can be turned around. Even if 90% of people just happily prefer ChatGPT for this (which I'd doubt), the remaining 10% is still a lot to fund a small venture very well. Just gotta find them effectively.
Even the "giving up" route can be pretty juicy, there's companies that pay decent money for a "distressed asset". And there's also investment firms (like mine) that go for a minority stake and help turn things around.
> When a user cancels a subscription Stripe asks them for a reason. At the moment I don’t really do anything with the cancellation reason, actually this is the first time I’ve ever looked at the data.
This comes across as very unserious. If you’re truly trying to build a business then this seems like one of the best signals/datapoints you can get…
I often think of my experience at Citibank 15 years ago when I closed my account at the branch. The teller said 'sure thing, just put your debit card into the device and enter your pin'. I did that and he said ok I'll close the account and give you cash? I said 'yes' and then it was done. He said, "have a great day!"
It was one of the best customer experiences of my life to not have to answer a series of 'why are you leaving?' questions and I would like to head back to Citibank just because of it. Unfortunately I don't live in NYC anymore so can't really do that.
Ironically, doesn't the "Get a job" paragraph have the solution? If you believe that is what the future of jobs at a company looks like, perhaps try to market your tool to agents?
You could add an API which is perfect for agents to use. Something that survives the pull request review process.
> People are using AI to convert their bank statements. This works pretty well if you only have a few pages of bank statements to convert. If you have hundreds of pages, then you’ll need to pay for AI to do the conversion.
Or you could have AI write a script to handle the conversion for your specific bank. It'll be faster than any service and free forever.
The author’s product extracts data from bank statement PDFs and puts it in XLSX format. Both of the banks I use provide CSV data export from their apps.
I’m not surprised the business is struggling - the author hasn’t found a deep enough problem to solve.
Seeing this with all my founder friends. Combination of Google AI summaries just sending much less traffic and AI tools being able to do small tasks by themself, rending a ton of SaaS less used.
AI kills SaaS dead - because most will use AI to do what this does directly (presumably convert bank statements), and the rest will use AI to write a non-AI tool that does it likely just as well.
I did this…
I have a specific system-generated PDF bank statement and it didn’t take too long to write a parsing program, which would have taken much longer before.
If it’s cheaper than having AI generate it directly, how about creating an MCP so AI can use this tool, and then trying connecting something like x402? It’s not exactly a subscription economy, but I think it could become a tool for AI
I have a feeling search traffic is down and lots of people are diverting to using AI, or to one of the sloppy competitors. Conveying bank statements doesn’t seem like there’s much of a moat around the workflow.
Taking my homepage as an example, when I allowed AI bots, I got about 1,200 visitors a day. But when I blocked them, that number dropped to around 140. It seems like over 70% of internet traffic these days is dominated by AI bots.
You can stand out by being authentic. Your face on the video, etc. Even writing it yourself genuinely instead of using an LLM. ex the article felt authentic.
But how you get authentic and engaging for bank statement converter? People search for it to solve particular problem in the first place, not to hear your life story.
And regarding face on video, I just got stuned with video of 106 years old giving life advices and all people but one in comment section didn't notice it is well generated.
-> But how you get authentic and engaging for bank statement converter? People search for it to solve particular problem in the first place, not to hear your life story.
No, the problem is too much (sloppy) content dilutes good conent. Searching for good content became impossible, so instead people go straight to AI to ask.
This is alright, but your main page is just trash. You mention you have 0 pages every 24 hours in the "Registered" free tier. You can't even check that but have time to write a post about how your business is dying? Like I understand you like content marketing but at least have your product ready for the potential customers that you might get via content marketing jfc
There is something I'd call Subscription Fatigue. People and businesses are asked to pay subscription fees left and right.
If I convert my bank statements only each quarter in a spike or once or twice a year, why should I pay for each month or the entire year? Of course I don't know the real usage patterns of this application, but that's one scenario I'd think of.
Subscription fatigue is real, and I'm currently going through it, but it's not the existence of subscription-only model which nudges me to cancel a membership.
If I pay for something, I want the tool to work for me. I can't use an application if it tries to steal my attention all the time. An upgrade pop-up there, a reminder notification there, and the application wears me down.
I like quiet applications. It's there. I'll use it. An unobtrusive promo button for a new feature is OK, but constant nudging for the same thing is tiring. Dropbox used to do that with document signatures, they stopped now AFAICS.
If I pay for your application, please be patient and respectful, because the moment I feel that your application is more about getting my money than providing me services, I'm out.
The value I get is in the service you provide via your application. Not the existence of said application, so stop treating your users as cows in line waiting to be milked.
This is another reason I'm self hosting as much as possible. I'm willing to put in the work to maintain an application rather than seeing constant banners and pop-ups wedged in to milk me more.
The perceptive utility of software declines when it is subscription-based in current times. A one-time fee for software is reasonable to a purchaser, renting/leasing software is no longer economical for the size of most phone apps...too little for too much.
*Edit: Apparently I forgot how to spell.
hell yes.
I hit this wall about 2-3 years ago at least...
> My friends tell me the job is basically managing AI agents and reading Pull Requests. That sounds like hell, and I’ll try to avoid it for as long as possible.
It really is not that bad when you are in a company with a good culture. Leadership is gonna be AI piled everywhere, but imho that's how you learn where to use (and not to use) the technology.
The hell part is the delay. Says the PR is done, but you only see the cliff once you read it.
Places that can't have code leave the work site still do not use AI.
Most places I know that have strict on-premise/air-gap requirements are just investing in on-premise AI and open source harnesses instead. The only ones that don't are the typical places that are slow to adopt technology in general (usually because they can afford to due to historic moat).
Some do, DOD is pushing grok
Wonder how that happened...
Someone bought a very expensive golf club membership?!
> Leadership is gonna be AI piled everywhere
I have doubts
I interact with plenty of companies - not a statistically relevant amount, but dozens. I'd put this at about 50% right now. I certainly deal with a not insignificant number of meat proxy CEOs, which is highly annoying for the people worrying about the details. But it's not impossible to work with. I just accept the overhead and hope it gets better.
I disagree. Having to work with the clanker is hell on earth. I'll do it if I have to, because I need to eat, but I hate every second I have to put up with those stupid things.
I appreciate your sentiment, but in my opinion this is the best our career has ever been.
This is the magical sci-fi future I always dreamed about, and it's getting better every quarter.
The amount of stuff I can do now, in terms of time and scope and volume, is unreal.
[delayed]
> Last time I worked at a company was November 2020. I love programming, but I really do not enjoy programming at a company. Things were bad in 2020, but I feel like they’re worse now.
They're much worse now, but that also creates more opportunity than ever before. Chaos truly can be a ladder if you take advantage of it and endure the unhappy parts. Having a bit of savings to work with can make all the difference. You can focus on emerging opportunities without melting down over your next paycheck.
The concept of W-2 employment is completely dead to me now. Especially for this kind of technology work. I charge per outcome now (1099). I am no longer interested in being provided what amounts to hazard pay for the job of interacting with an adult day care center every day. Walking in as a hired gun with no political agenda and a clear mission feels great compared to where I was before. When I do participate in the clients' meetings, I generally get away with murder because I am laser focused on the outcome itself (my compensation) rather than belaboring whatever technical details behind it. If I'm on a call these days, there's an explicit reason for it. The business can sense that I am aligned with their goals, so the proverbial seas tend to be parted whenever I unmute my microphone.
The clients' salaried developers loathe me to the extent that it's creating even more opportunities. The amount of unqualified ego tripping in tech has become astounding and can serve as a powerful ally for humble wizards.
It is not ego tripping. They probably loathe you because you turn the power structures even more in capital's favour by undercutting or overriding them.
Somebody else said most of it, but I'll add a little more. Said developers loathe you because you decimate the thing they care about for your own benefit by being a hired gun of management and doing the killing for them.
Sub-humble-wizard here, how do I sign up?
I liked the article, although I have no idea what it even means to convert your bank statements. Is this a Chinese thing?
I assume it means converting PDFs transaction statements provided by banks into spreadsheets which accounting software can import.
I just have Claude Code do this for me.
I'm surprised some banks don't provide a CSV export for statements, even if some do, they format it a XLSX file with images and meta descriptions in as header
Hang in there. I've yet so see an even modestly successful business that didn't have this or some other bleak problem at one point in time. I'm sure they exist, I just haven't seen one yet :D
My gut says this one can be turned around. Even if 90% of people just happily prefer ChatGPT for this (which I'd doubt), the remaining 10% is still a lot to fund a small venture very well. Just gotta find them effectively.
Even the "giving up" route can be pretty juicy, there's companies that pay decent money for a "distressed asset". And there's also investment firms (like mine) that go for a minority stake and help turn things around.
> When a user cancels a subscription Stripe asks them for a reason. At the moment I don’t really do anything with the cancellation reason, actually this is the first time I’ve ever looked at the data.
This comes across as very unserious. If you’re truly trying to build a business then this seems like one of the best signals/datapoints you can get…
I often think of my experience at Citibank 15 years ago when I closed my account at the branch. The teller said 'sure thing, just put your debit card into the device and enter your pin'. I did that and he said ok I'll close the account and give you cash? I said 'yes' and then it was done. He said, "have a great day!"
It was one of the best customer experiences of my life to not have to answer a series of 'why are you leaving?' questions and I would like to head back to Citibank just because of it. Unfortunately I don't live in NYC anymore so can't really do that.
Ironically, doesn't the "Get a job" paragraph have the solution? If you believe that is what the future of jobs at a company looks like, perhaps try to market your tool to agents?
You could add an API which is perfect for agents to use. Something that survives the pull request review process.
I like this writing style, dry and direct. Refreshing after reading ai output all the time.
Agreed
I'll be launching in a week.
"Claude, a business is making $30K/mo converting bank statements!
Use all of my max 20x plan to build a BETTER version. Must have animated per-page progress indicators"
> People are using AI to convert their bank statements. This works pretty well if you only have a few pages of bank statements to convert. If you have hundreds of pages, then you’ll need to pay for AI to do the conversion.
Or you could have AI write a script to handle the conversion for your specific bank. It'll be faster than any service and free forever.
This is often what I find people do with AI now, give it the task to do when getting it to writing a script is the correct solution.
Further the issue of exposing all your sensitive data to the AI provider.
The author’s product extracts data from bank statement PDFs and puts it in XLSX format. Both of the banks I use provide CSV data export from their apps.
I’m not surprised the business is struggling - the author hasn’t found a deep enough problem to solve.
Not to mention all of the SOTA AI subscriptions handle this perfectly now when there aren’t csv exports
Seeing this with all my founder friends. Combination of Google AI summaries just sending much less traffic and AI tools being able to do small tasks by themself, rending a ton of SaaS less used.
A lot of these super-simple utility apps will die off with AI.
Two years ago I paid a little app to extract the member list of a WhatsApp community I manage. Now I just ask Codex to do it.
It sucks for the founders no doubt. But it’s better for the consumer not to have a million paid utility apps for solving small nuisances.
AI kills SaaS dead - because most will use AI to do what this does directly (presumably convert bank statements), and the rest will use AI to write a non-AI tool that does it likely just as well.
I did this… I have a specific system-generated PDF bank statement and it didn’t take too long to write a parsing program, which would have taken much longer before.
If it’s cheaper than having AI generate it directly, how about creating an MCP so AI can use this tool, and then trying connecting something like x402? It’s not exactly a subscription economy, but I think it could become a tool for AI
I have a feeling search traffic is down and lots of people are diverting to using AI, or to one of the sloppy competitors. Conveying bank statements doesn’t seem like there’s much of a moat around the workflow.
All I see is a company with a lot of users and good revenue. This looks like a great moat to build a business off of!
This was a really honest and nice read. I also appreciated the last paragraph.
Personally I work at a FAANG adjacent big tech company and dream of quitting every fucking second
Taking my homepage as an example, when I allowed AI bots, I got about 1,200 visitors a day. But when I blocked them, that number dropped to around 140. It seems like over 70% of internet traffic these days is dominated by AI bots.
Content marketing is dying because content slop is massively generated now.
You can stand out by being authentic. Your face on the video, etc. Even writing it yourself genuinely instead of using an LLM. ex the article felt authentic.
But how you get authentic and engaging for bank statement converter? People search for it to solve particular problem in the first place, not to hear your life story.
And regarding face on video, I just got stuned with video of 106 years old giving life advices and all people but one in comment section didn't notice it is well generated.
-> But how you get authentic and engaging for bank statement converter? People search for it to solve particular problem in the first place, not to hear your life story.
That's the hard part :)
I disagree, I think if you slop out your content it will be disregarded. It seems to be pretty easy to identify now with tools like Pangram.
No, the problem is too much (sloppy) content dilutes good conent. Searching for good content became impossible, so instead people go straight to AI to ask.
yes that's true
This is alright, but your main page is just trash. You mention you have 0 pages every 24 hours in the "Registered" free tier. You can't even check that but have time to write a post about how your business is dying? Like I understand you like content marketing but at least have your product ready for the potential customers that you might get via content marketing jfc