The Shackleton adventure, a New Project, and Our First Push-Button

I announced that a beta would be ready this week. Well… we’re running just a little bit behind schedule, it’s starting to feel like Groundhog Day!

The good news is that we’ve made great progress: the flows work and the emails are ready to go. All that’s left is some design polish, a solid testing phase, and a few adjustments to the landing page. We even bent our weekend “off-screen” rule because we really want this out before October 1st.

Here is what happened this week.

The Reality of a Productized Service

After struggling for months to build a product heavily reliant on AI, we ended up taking a completely different direction.

Today in Lutains, AI just handles raw data processing behind the scenes. That’s it.

The landing page review, the strategic thinking, the intuition and all the rest are 100% done by Aymeric and me. I truly believe that the successful AI SaaS products of the future will largely incorporate a “human-in-the-loop” approach.

There is just one slight complication we hadn't really anticipated. Having interactions between the user and us adds massive complexity to the workflow (more emails, more extensive front-end tracking, etc.). All of this slowed us down, but it’s nothing serious in itself!

We’re also wrapping up the week with some good news: three people already seem interested in the beta, which is incredibly motivating!

A new project, but one thing at a time

There’s a product idea that keeps coming up, and we think we’ve found the right angle. Honestly, it’ll complement Lutains perfectly. I’m really looking forward to telling you more about it! For now, I can at least introduce you to Leo, the new mascot we’ll be using for this project.

A Modest Win for Hardware

There wasn't major progress on the electronics front: we mostly revisited the basics and added our first push-buttons to a circuit. It might not seem like much, but being able to interact with and control what’s happening physically is incredibly satisfying!

What I’m reading: Build in public, 1914 style

I’ve just finished The Consolations of the Forest (Dans les forêts de Sibérie) by Sylvain Tesson and immediately dove into Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. I’m definitely sticking with the cold weather theme, which contrasts nicely with the sunshine outside!

I’ve always had deep respect for sailors (my grandfather was one, which probably explains it).They truly possess a spirit of adventure and an incredible sense of optimism in the face of extremely difficult conditions. The book is actually based on the sailors' logs from that era, and I find there’s a strong parallel to the concept of "building in public" (the authentic kind) today.

I’m halfway through the book and can sense there won’t be a happy ending, but I’m eager to see what happens next. :)

And finally, following up on a recent tweet of mine, I’m really proud to say that this update is 100% human-made.

(Link of the tweet : https://x.com/YoannaJuille/status/2103454541156876364)

Have a great week everyone, and see you soon! :)