Episode 20: When the LLMs drain your bank account

Episode 20: When the LLMs drain your bank account

Building Out Loud: When the LLMs drain your bank account (and How to Prevent It) In this episode of Building Out Loud, Faith shares a weekend incident while preparing Discoveree to go live: updates to competitor profiles triggered repeated refresh errors, causing the system to retry every few seconds and run via Gemini (then Perplexity), rapidly consuming her LLM budgets and auto-recharging until it drained her business account by a couple of thousand pounds.  They discuss how AI agents can behave like an “intelligent but idiotic intern,” the emotional impact of being responsible for the code, and the safeguards Faith added—circuit breakers after three failures, requiring a user login to trigger 24-hour schedules, and segregating LLM spend into a separate bank account—plus knock-on costs like Langfuse overages and account blocks. 00:00 Welcome and Heatwave 00:49 Big Weekend Incident 00:58 Product Updates Before Launch 01:47 Runaway Refresh Drains Budget 02:29 How Bad Was It 04:15 AI Intern and Safeguards 05:49 Spend Limits and Auto Recharge 06:51 Segregating Accounts and Tool Costs 08:17 Phishing Like Feeling 09:30 Monitoring Agents and Alerts 10:18 Lessons Learned and Wrap Up

Episode 19: Is SaaS dead? Should I even launch?

Building Out Loud: Is SaaS dead? Should I even launch?  Randy Silver and Faith Forster discuss why Discoveree still isn’t charging, and some of the realities of getting an AI native product to production. Faith is also tightening MCP connections after testing showed setup confusion; she’s preconfiguring common tools like Notion so users can enable them easily.  She shares a post-Easter loss of momentum, doubts fueled by “SaaS is dead” talk, and burnout from building a complex product solo. She has regained confidence after seeing how some of the top tech teams are using AI, and realised they're optimising for individual workflows rather than team collaboration and business outcomes—which is much more complex, reinforcing Discoveree’s value in secure, collaborative, business-context decision-making.  She’s refining positioning to “make better product decisions faster, together,” simplifying the website, considering branding as Discoveree.com. She talks about soft launch plans, the role of product ops in supporting AI adoption within the organisations, and adding guided onboarding/ customer success support. 00:00 Two Instances Problem 01:55 MCP Tooling Setup 02:36 Founder Doubts Surface 04:25 SaaS Is Dead Debate 05:26 Teamwork Value Proposition 09:12 Burnout And Momentum 10:56 Positioning And Branding 13:05 Soft Launch Plan 14:20 Targeting Product Ops 15:52 Onboarding And Taxonomy 17:43 Next Week With DJ

Episode 18: Launch readiness & introducing the Makers Manifesto

Building Out Loud: Launch readiness & a new Manifesto for an AI world Randy Silver and Faith Forster check in on Faith’s progress building Discoveree as she nears launch, delayed partly by a recent Lovable data leak and her desire to meet a high quality bar, including a help centre and user agreement.  Faith shares practical progress (buying discoveree.com, registering the business, setting up a bank account, and checking tooling for scalability) and discusses prioritising launch readiness, using external timelines for accountability, and the growing need for customer success and broader marketing to drive adoption. They explore QA and documentation challenges when building quickly with agents, including keeping help content current and ideas for generating it via Replit.  Faith & Randy also introduce the “next Agile Manifesto”, a draft set of core principles for an AI world. Created with 42 contributors across disciplines and from around the world, it is being tested at upcoming conferences in Australia, Lisbon and Hamburg. It balances enduring principles with radically changing execution to create what they hope will be a blueprint for how to make great products at speed. Visit makersmanifesto.org to see the principles and share your comments.  00:00 Welcome Back Update 00:33 Launch Readiness Checklist 01:43 Defining Enough To Ship 03:00 Deadlines And External Accountability 03:31 Adoption Marketing And Funding 05:08 Solo QA And Documentation 06:37 Automating The Help Center 07:57 New AI Manifesto Origins 10:16 Principles Strategy And Context 14:25 Draft Launch And Community Feedback 15:58 Wrap Up Next Week Goals

Episode 17: Surfacing the work - Slack, Claude & Soft Launch Readiness

Building Out Loud: Surfacing the work - Slack, Claude & Soft Launch Readiness In this episode of Building Out Loud, Randy Silver catches up with Faith as she moves from pre-launch fear to excitement.  Faith shares major product improvements driven by feedback from Sara (CPO at Semble) and a private equity conversation. Faith adds a seamless Slack connection so anyone can submit feedback, create opportunities, and query the roadmap via a chief-of-staff agent, and introduces a “thought partner” assistant alongside existing workflow help, reorganising the experience into Organising, Thinking, and Doing.  They discuss triage across deep dives (growth strategy), opportunities (features tied to commercial outcomes), and quick wins (automatable fixes with rules and tracking).  Faith positions Discovery as collaborative context for Claude, sets up payments and pricing (first seat free for early signups), and plans a soft launch supported by videos and adoption metrics.  They also discuss Dave Killeen's early challenge on whether it needs a UI or could be headless, and how we meet people where they are.  00:00 Launch Jitters Fade 01:01 Sarahs Alpha Feedback 01:54 Slack Integration Boost 02:34 Thought Partner Assistant 03:25 Organize Think Do Tabs 04:05 Idea Intake And Triage 06:31 Strategy Deep Dives 07:40 Three Level Framework 08:29 Claude And Collaboration 10:12 Payments And Pricing 11:03 Soft Launch Plan 11:38 Adoption Metrics And Doubts 12:54 Interface Or Headless Future 15:34 Wrap Up And Next Week Learn more about Discoveree: https://discoveree.com/

Episode 16: Demo of beta product

Building Out Loud: Beta feedback, product polish, and the evolving positioning  Randy Silver and Faith Forster discuss progress on Faith’s product leadership platform as it moves from early beta toward launch. The focus has been on fine-tuning UX, streamlining flows, and adding “polish” based on tester behaviour and direct feedback, including a session where Faith observed her husband using it.  Faith demos the updated platform homepage, assistant handoffs, chief-of-staff integrations, improved “what’s changed” alerts, goal-cycle reminders, and an idea-testing feature that evaluates product ideas against strategy, goals, competitors, and customer segments.  They cover limited-but-useful usage analytics, the shift from strategy as the core hook to opportunities as the driver of daily active use. Also  challenges like GDPR and internal approval barriers, plans to automate agent-readable documentation. The positioning continues to evolve, moving toward an “AI CPO companion”. Faith is giving herself a two-week push to finalise payments and get ready for launch. 00:00 Welcome Back Update 00:49 Husband Beta Test 02:48 Platform Demo Begins 03:29 Homepage And Assistants 06:15 Idea Testing Feature 07:09 Usage Data And Onboarding 08:39 Active Use And Opportunities 10:29 Launch Prep And Help Docs 12:37 New Positioning AI CPO 14:38 Full Platform Tour 17:55 Workflow And Value Loop 20:15 Easter Plans And Pricing 20:58 Wrap Up Next Check In Learn more about Discoveree: https://discoveree.com/