Elixir Mentor

Adam Gusky, solo founder of Blawgy, on how businesses get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI tools, and what technical founders get wrong about marketing. Adam went from a college wrestling meme page and 30 side projects to quitting his job, selling Blawgy as a hand-built service, watching it churn, and rebuilding it into a product agencies now run for their clients.We get into SEO vs AEO, whether a post every day still works, and why most people will buy software instead of vibe coding it. I share how customers are finding Killswitch through AI answers, the Grok Bot team behind its marketing, and the partner program I'm building with attorneys and financial advisors.00:00 - Introduction02:19 - A college meme page and 30 side projects04:05 - What Blawgy does04:51 - Is SEO dead? SEO vs AEO and GEO07:18 - How long before it works10:34 - FoodBuddy and the menu item calorie play12:21 - Agent readiness and llms.txt15:23 - Customers finding Killswitch through AI18:35 - Quitting the job to build Blawgy22:12 - From hand-built service to real product24:26 - Guardrails and multi-pass quality checks26:17 - The Blawgy pixel and refreshing old posts33:30 - Why people buy software instead of vibe coding it38:37 - Handoff plans for solo founders45:23 - Blawgy's stack, AI coding tools, and Tmux54:06 - Marketing Killswitch with Grok Bots56:31 - CAPTCHAs, bots, and AI slop on social58:48 - A partner program for attorneys and advisors1:01:09 - Local cold outreach that gets replies1:03:02 - Why Blawgy sells to agencies1:09:50 - Tiered pricing and finding agencies with Apollo1:13:23 - SEO agencies, backlinks, and a cold email experiment1:16:34 - Is a post every day overkill?1:19:08 - Building an AI podcast producer1:27:42 - Where to find AdamResources Mentioned:- Blawgy: https://blawgy.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- MyFoodBuddy: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/myfoodbuddy/id6505124191?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Is It Agent Ready: https://isitagentready.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentorConnect with Adam:- X/Twitter: https://x.com/adamc0dez?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Blawgy on X: https://x.com/blawgyseo?utm_source=elixir-mentorSponsors:- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentorSUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Brice Ayres, founder of Axio Intelligence, on fractional engineering and what changes when one senior engineer can run a team of AI agents. Brice went from the Army and a 3.7 million follower Facebook cause to finding Elixir at Topgolf, leading engineering orgs, and going out on his own.We get into managing agents like an engineering org, whether you still need to read every line, and why Ash keeps LLMs on the rails. I share how a team of Grok Bots handles marketing, support, and QA for Killswitch, and we close with Brice's playbook for cutting cloud costs.00:00 - Introduction02:51 - Web dev class, the Army, and a viral nonprofit08:38 - Finding Elixir at Topgolf13:00 - What is fractional engineering?16:10 - Vibe coding and why engineers still matter24:03 - Think like an engineering manager26:32 - Reviewing AI code, Ash, and established patterns29:55 - Offmic, a live AI podcast producer35:18 - Running agents like an engineering org40:51 - Read-only agents in prod and self-healing infra42:05 - A Polymarket bot with agent consensus47:06 - Marketing Killswitch with Grok Bots52:06 - Lighthouse scores and agentic browsing56:13 - Getting found by LLMs59:27 - Order with Surf: agentic food ordering1:02:48 - Agent QA and local testing with K3s and Floci1:05:40 - Data labeling, synthetic data, and edge AI1:08:55 - Nerves, Peridio, and Avocado OS1:11:47 - Bot traffic, analytics, and self-hosting1:16:00 - Hardware stories and real-world edge cases1:26:24 - When engineers ship faster than you can plan1:29:10 - Monoliths, Postgres scaling, and ETS1:36:40 - Where to find Brice1:37:44 - Cutting cloud costs: logging and AZ trafficResources Mentioned:- Axio Intelligence: https://axiointelligence.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Grok Bot: https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentorConnect with Brice:- X/Twitter: https://x.com/briceayres?utm_source=elixir-mentor- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briceayres/?utm_source=elixir-mentorSponsors:- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentorSUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I step a little outside the BEAM to talk with Francesco Ciulla, Head of DevRel at Zerops. Francesco came up as a Rust developer and content creator with a 300,000-subscriber YouTube channel, and we get into the problem every builder runs into: getting developers to actually adopt what you ship.Francesco shares how he went from a corporate developer role at the European Space Agency to going independent, building an audience, and publishing his own Rust book. We talk about why distribution matters as much as the work itself, how public speaking changed him, and what being a developer looks like in 2026 with AI in the mix.From there we get into developer relations directly. Francesco explains what the job actually is, why you can't advocate for a product you don't believe in, and how he builds credibility for something he didn't write. He breaks down what Zerops does as a platform, how it compares to running things on GCP, and where developers fall off between signing up and getting real value.We also cover building a brand by declaring it and not stopping, why negative comments are a sign your audience is growing, language tribalism in tech, the risks of shipping vibe-coded projects without thinking about security, and what it takes to run Elixir on Zerops. A useful conversation for anyone trying to get a tool, a project, or themselves in front of developers.Resources Mentioned:- Zerops:https://zerops.ioConnect with Francesco:- X/Twitter:https://x.com/FrancescoCiull4- Website:https://francescociulla.comSponsors:- BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk- Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.ioSUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR- Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com

Jason Allum returns to the Elixir Mentor Podcast to talk about Beadwork, his filesystem-native, git-synced issue tracker built for AI coding agents. With 40 years of building software and cleaning up other people's messes, Jason has a sharp read on where agentic coding falls apart.The conversation starts with Beads, the ticketing tool that inspired Beadwork, and why it eventually devolved into slop as it grew. Jason explains how coding agents lose the thread on long tasks through compaction and drift, and how a clean queue of tickets keeps an agent moving toward the right outcome instead of stitching back together the very thing it was told to tear out.From there we get into how Beadwork is built: a git-synced design backed by an orphan branch that sidesteps the merge conflicts that made earlier tools painful for teams and work trees. Jason walks through breaking large changes into epics and issues, pausing the agent to catch drift, and the parts of the job an agent still can't do, like architecture decisions, taste, and judgment.We also cover raising the quality bar on agent output, the efficiency argument around tokens, multi-project and team workflows, and the prompts Jason reaches for to get better plans. If you write code alongside an agent every day, this one is full of practical, common-sense workflow advice you can put to use right away.Resources Mentioned:- Beadwork:https://github.com/jallum/beadwork- Bedrock (from last time):https://github.com/bedrock-kv/bedrockConnect with Jason:- X/Twitter:https://x.com/mullaj- GitHub:https://github.com/jallumSponsors:- BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk- Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.ioSUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR- Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I talk with Tjaco Oostdijk, a drummer turned Elixir developer now working at DPG Media, one of the largest media companies in the Netherlands. Tjaco played drums professionally from the age of seven and has taught for 22 years, before landing in software through a music distribution company writing Ruby and eventually moving to Elixir nearly a decade ago.We get into what it takes to keep Elixir running inside a large enterprise. DPG adopted Elixir after a high-traffic Ruby service fell over at scale, and Tjaco describes the reality of working in a locked-down environment standardized on Kotlin, using Copilot with Anthropic models while waiting for Claude Code to be approved. He also talks about the colleagues who stay skeptical of AI tooling and why that skepticism can be healthy.The heart of the conversation is muziekles.app, the application Tjaco built for Dutch music teachers to run their entire teaching practice, from year-long scheduling and student accounts to homework and assignments. He explains why he deliberately keeps payments out of the product, how he thinks about onboarding teachers, and the build process using Phoenix, Ash, Claude Code, and Tidewave. We also compare notes on shipping side projects fast, multi-tenancy in Ash, and the differences between hardware and software work.If you are building with Elixir inside a company that hasn't standardized on it, or shipping a side project with AI tooling, this conversation is full of practical, hard-won lessons from someone doing both at once.Connect with Tjaco:- Website:https://drumusician.com- X / Twitter:https://x.com/drumusician- GitHub:https://github.com/drumusician- LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjaco-oostdijkResources Mentioned:- muziekles.app:https://muziekles.app- Tidewave:https://tidewave.ai- Vocablo:https://vocabloapp.com- Kabisa:https://kabisa.nlSponsors:- BEAMOps:https://beamops.co.uk- Paraxial.io:https://paraxial.ioSUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR- Elixir Mentor:https://elixirmentor.com