I built a tool I needed.
You’re paying what it costs.

I built this for myself.

I’m a software founder who can’t stop being curious. In meetings, on walks, mid-conversation — ideas spark that I genuinely want to understand. But sitting at a desk to research something for an hour is a luxury I don’t have between running a company and chasing a toddler.

So I tried podcasts. It was a miserable experience — fifteen minutes scrolling to find an episode at the right depth, only to find it full of banter or two years out of date. The specific thing I wanted to know? Nobody had made that episode.

So I built it. A tool that takes any topic, researches it live, writes a real narrative, and turns it into an audio episode I can listen to on my next walk. Distill is that tool, opened up so anyone can use it.

I didn’t set out to build a business. That’s the whole answer.

When you build something for yourself — not for investors, not for a roadmap, not for a deck — you don’t need a margin. The cost of running Distill is the cost you pay.

“When you build something for yourself, you don’t need a margin.”

There’s one way Distill eventually becomes sustainable: interest. You buy $5 in credits upfront, use them when you’re curious, and while that balance sits idle, it earns a little. Across enough users, that float is the business model. No data sold. No ads. No hidden tier.

Right now it’s mostly me and a few friends. The float covers nothing yet. But the structure is honest, and it grows cleanly.

If anything changes, you’ll know first.

If Distill ever needs to charge more to stay alive, I’ll say so directly — with the reason why and the new number. No quiet update. No “we’ve revised our fee structure” email with the real change buried in paragraph three.

The credits you buy are the product. There’s nothing waiting behind them.