Why we're building ABMediaX from Pennsylvania
I get asked this a lot. Usually by people who assume "software company" and "Bay Area" are the same word. They're not, and they haven't been for a while, and I want to explain why ABMediaX is being built out of a small town in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, instead of somewhere with a founder-house co-working membership and a fancy espresso bar.
I grew up building things people can touch
Before I wrote software full time, I was a carpenter. I've framed houses. I've hung crown molding at two in the morning because a client had a party the next day. I've measured a door twice, cut it once, and still had to shim it. The physical world does not care about your Notion doc. It cares about whether the thing is square, whether it holds weight, whether the customer is happy when they walk in.
That's the same thing software should do — hold weight and make the person on the other side of it happy. And most software today does neither. It's a slot machine. It's an upsell funnel. It's a "book a demo" button in front of a product that a competent person could have just bought in three clicks.
I got tired of it. And I noticed that a lot of the tools I actually needed as a small operator — a way to post everywhere at once, a way to spin up a landing page, a way to sell a digital thing — were either garbage, or wildly overpriced, or wanted to charge me per seat for a business where I'm the only seat. So I started building them.
Why Pennsylvania
Because it's cheap, quiet, and honest, and because I like it here. That's the whole answer.
The longer version: I don't need to be next to venture capital, because I'm not raising venture capital. I don't need to be next to the "talent pool," because the talent pool for a two-person software company is my laptop and a very good relationship with a few contractors. I don't need to network at demo days. I don't need to be in the room. The internet fixed all of that.
What I do need is a low burn rate, a quiet place to think for six hours at a stretch, and a community that has never once asked me what my TAM is. Palmerton, PA gives me all three. Rent isn't $6,000. My coffee shop knows my name and doesn't try to sell me a NFT. When I close the laptop, I'm two miles from a trout stream.
I understand this is not glamorous. That's kind of the point.
Not funded. Not for sale.
Every SaaS company I use has a story arc, and the arc is always the same:
- Founder builds a great product. It's fast, cheap, opinionated.
- Founder raises money.
- Founder has to grow 3x a year to justify the round.
- Founder adds seat-based pricing, "enterprise plans," and a sales team.
- Founder sells to private equity.
- Product now costs 4x, is slower, and every feature update is behind a chat widget.
I don't want to run that play. So I'm not going to. ABMediaX is bootstrapped from paid work, and it will stay that way. If it grows, it grows because customers pay for it. If it doesn't, it doesn't, and I'll keep doing carpentry.
That's a real fallback, by the way. It's not a bit. I know how to swing a hammer and I could go back to it tomorrow. Which is exactly why I get to write software the way I want to.
What this means for you
If you sign up for anything I build:
- Nobody is going to sell you. I don't have a sales team. If I do someday, they will not cold-call you.
- You can leave whenever. One click. No retention flow, no phone tree.
- Your data is yours. Export it in the format it went in. Delete it and I'll delete it.
- Prices go up carefully. Sometimes costs go up and prices have to too. I'll tell you why. I'll grandfather the people who were there first. I'm not going to double the price in a Slack DM to my board.
- I'll answer the email. Not a bot. Not a tier-1 CX rep in Manila. Me, or someone who works with me and has permission to say yes.
What ABMediaX actually is
It's a small holding company for a few software products that fit together. Poster is live. Sites and Market are next. There's room for a couple more if they earn their spot.
They all share one login and one bill because that's how people actually want to use software. Not "log in to seven different tools to run one business." One dashboard. One credit card on file. One human to yell at when something breaks. That's the whole product.
The name is a play on my initials — Austin Berger — and "MediaX" because most of what these tools do is help you make and move media on the internet. There's no committee that approved the name. I picked it because I liked it.
What's next
I'll keep writing here. Not every week, not on a content calendar, just when there's actually something to say. Probably:
- Behind the scenes of how Poster works
- How Sites is going to be different from every other AI website builder
- Whatever I'm mad about that week in SaaS pricing
- The occasional post about actual carpentry, because I still do it
If you want to be on the list when Sites or Market opens up, get on the waitlist. If you already have a specific thing you want built for your business, tell me about it — I take on two projects a month.
Otherwise, thanks for reading. Talk soon.
— Austin