If your first startup launches three weeks before a global pandemic, you learn fast.

That’s what happened to Lasse Finderup, CEO and co-founder of Good Tape, a privacy-focused AI transcription tool. On this episode of Keep Going, Lasse sat down with me to talk about building from failure, staying bootstrapped, and why sometimes the most boring products lead to the best outcomes.

Good Tape started as a side project inside a Danish newsroom. A developer on the IT team—someone Lasse describes as “the best kind of nerd”—put together a prototype to save journalists from the slog of manual transcription. It worked. People loved it. Now, with over 2.5 million users in every country but North Korea, Good Tape has become the go-to tool for anyone who needs fast, accurate, and private transcriptions.

But this isn’t Lasse’s first rodeo. His first company was a traditional travel agency. It launched in 2019 and he went full-time in February 2020—weeks before COVID shut down global travel. “It was like a teenager carrying the world on his shoulders,” he told me. The experience taught him a lot, especially about the mental toll of building a passion-driven business. Good Tape, by contrast, isn’t built on wanderlust. It’s built on discipline.

“I don’t love transcription,” he said. “But it works. It solves a real problem. It makes money. And we make it better every week.”

That mindset carries through in how the team builds. While competitors are racing to bolt on every AI feature they can, Good Tape focuses on the one thing that matters: quality. “One button. One job. Get it right.” They’ve avoided the VC rush so far, preferring to stay lean and profitable. But Lasse isn’t naïve. “If a competitor raises $100 million, that defines the market dynamic. You can’t ignore it.” So now, for the first time, he’s weighing a hard question: do we stay safe, or go full throttle?

For now, he’s still testing, watching, thinking. But if you ask him what he’d do with a lottery win? “Same thing. Same team. Same space. It’s just so much fun.”

Sometimes you pivot because your first idea dies. Sometimes you pivot because your second idea quietly works. Either way, if you build something that people use—and trust—you’re doing it right.

Check out goodtape.io. No signup. No nonsense. Just a tool that does the job.