• It's not an "all-in-one content solution"

• It's not an "AI-powered creator ecosystem"

• It's not trying to "disrupt the creator economy"

(If you want any of those things, there are plenty of VC-funded startups happy to sell you their vision of the future.)

[Wondering why we're so skeptical about the usual tech industry approach? Here's our take on how everything got so complicated.]

Castuner

The Problem with Everything

Ever notice how tech products seem to get worse the more enterprise-ready they become…

Read more

a year ago · David Poblador i Garcia

Here's what Castuner actually is: A set of tools that help creators make their content shine. We're starting with podcasts because, honestly, there are too many hidden gems getting buried under mountains of marketing busywork.

The basic idea is simple: Great content deserves attention. But creating content is the fun part. Marketing it? Not so much. Creators are spending ridiculous amounts of time trying to promote their work across different platforms, often with tools that feel like they were designed by a committee of corporate buzzword enthusiasts.

So we're building something different. Think Instagram filters, but for content promotion - clever presets that actually work, instead of endless knobs and dials you'll never use.

What does that mean in practice?

• Your audio becomes social-ready videos in minutes, not hours

• Transcriptions that actually understand your language (shocking, we know)

• Summaries that don't sound like they were written by a robot

• Chapter breaks that make sense

• Speaker detection that works

Yes, we use AI models for some of this. No, we won't make that our entire personality. We're more interested in accurate transcripts than buzzword bingo.

Some other things worth knowing:

• We keep costs low by being clever with resources, not by cutting corners

• We don't track your audience (no sneaky cookies, no "journey mapping")

• We're building this with you, not for you

• If it doesn't work out, we'll shut down gracefully and refund unused credits

We're opening up for early testing soon. No long waitlist, no invite your friends to move up the queue games. Just an honest attempt to build something useful.

Want to be part of the early test group? Stay subscribed. We'll share updates here first, including how to get early access.

Subscribe now

And yes, we'll keep the corporate speak to a minimum. Promise.

It usually goes something like this: A small team builds something genuinely useful. People love it. Then the "growth phase" kicks in. Suddenly there's a 20-person committee deciding if the "Share" button should be blue or slightly-less-blue. The product roadmap looks like someone dropped a bowl of alphabet soup. And somewhere, a team is building a microservice just to handle the hover state of a tooltip.

This isn't just tech nostalgia talking. Remember when Instagram had 30 million users and a team small enough to fit in a minivan? When Craigslist served entire cities with fewer people than most companies have in their daily standup? These weren't flukes. They were proof that small, focused teams can do remarkable things when they're not busy overcomplicating everything.

But somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that success means:

• Building complex systems because "that's how the big companies do it"

• Adding features nobody asked for because the roadmap needs filling

• Tracking every user interaction because... actually, why are we doing this?

• Turning simple tools into "enterprise platforms" (whatever that means)

The real victims? The doers. The people who just want to get things done. Instead, they're stuck wrestling with tools that feel like they were designed by a committee of corporate buzzword enthusiasts:

"Leverage our AI-powered content optimization platform to synergize your multi-channel engagement strategy!"

(Translation: "Here's a button that posts things.")

What if we just... stopped doing that?

What if we built tools that:

• Solve real problems without needing a training course

• Use good technology because it helps, not because it looks good in pitch decks

• Actually respect user privacy (no, really - not the "we take your privacy seriously" kind)

• Stay focused on making content better instead of making feature lists longer

That's not just wishful thinking. It's entirely possible. The tech industry just forgot how to do it somewhere between Series B and their first corporate values offsite.

Next up: What we're actually building at Castuner, and why we won't put "AI-POWERED!" in flashing letters on our homepage (even though, yes, we use AI).

Castuner

What's Castuner

Let's start with what Castuner isn't…

Read more

a year ago · David Poblador i Garcia

Want to follow along as we try to build something genuinely useful without the usual tech industry bloat? That's what this newsletter is for. No growth hacking. No corporate speak. Just honest updates about building tools that actually help people get things done.

Subscribe now

And maybe occasional rants about why every button needs its own data lake.