内容历史
i don't know how else to tell you >lock in >play with ai tools, use terminal >ship many tiny apps >most will fail >find the one that works >double down >taste freedom and you'll outperform 99.9% of the planet who hasn't figured this out in 2026
Temperature check: Would you rather own stock in Anthropic ($350B val), OpenAI ($830B val) or xAI ($230B val)?
ive been hanging out with founders under 22 lately living in sf/nyc and they're built different. my observations of these young founders getting rich with AI: 1. these kids grew up watching YT creators flexing Porsches and private jets from their bedrooms. but when they looked at their own reality, they saw $200k college tuition and $45k entry-level jobs. the math didn't work. so they decided to skip the broken system entirely. 2. that economic reality shaped everything about them. they're unapologetically capitalistic in a way that reminds me of the 80s Wall Street era. pure survival capitalism. they think they need millions just to live comfortably, they look at $4,000 studio apartments in ny, and they're not wrong. tons of economic pressure for everyone right now and inflation worries. 3. so they formed group chats with other founders. their mentors are podcasts. they're plugged in and learning 24/7, treating business like a multiplayer video game they're trying to beat. 4. sam altman said something that stuck with me: older generations use ChatGPT as a Google replacement, but these kids use it as an operating system. they see this AI era as their gateway out of economic reality. 5. everything they do is optimized for virality. their startup journey reads like a Netflix documentary with built-in trailers. every product decision considers "will this clip work on X?" they reverse engineer social algorithms with their business models. it's like NELK Boys meets Spielberg meets YC demo day. 6. they build products designed to go viral on specific platforms. they'll time launches around trending topics. they'll create TikToks showcasing their SaaS tool like entertainment content. 7. some go the cash flow route, building consumer mobile apps like nikita or build saas portfolios. others raise millions in VC funding. the more the vc the better they think. 8. they document every failure, breakthrough, and late-night coding session. their businesses are performanc...
In a year, the internet will be really different. We’re seeing just tip of the iceberg of what Claude code can do. Crazy times.
just mass cancelled $27k/year in subscriptions made a claude code skill that: 1. reads credit card statements/extracts subscriptions 2. automatically asks follow-up q's to clarify which ones you want to cancel 3. actually opens chrome and literally cancels them for you
HOW TO BUILD A BIG CONSUMER B2C MOBILE APP IN 2026 1. start with a single recurring behavior people already document, like meals, sleep, workouts, studying, dating, or routines. 2. anchor the app to one question users already ask themselves daily, like “am I doing this right?” 3. narrow it to one audience, like college students tracking meals, busy parents tracking sleep, or single people tracking dates. 4. design the product so the core value appears visually in under five seconds 5. build the demo before the full product and let the demo define the feature set 6. keep videos between 20–40 seconds so curiosity builds without dragging 7. default to faceless formats like screen recordings, slideshows, or b-roll with captions (easier to do, can do founder led if that's your thing too) 8. create multiple hooks around the same demo instead of multiple demos. 9. use comparison formats like before/after, expectation vs reality, or me vs me 10. write hooks the way people text friends: short, casual, and specific 11. treat pauses, rewatches, and saves as the strongest signals of interest (this is v important) 12. read comments as public product research that reveals confusion, desire, and identity 13. paste comments into Claude Code and cluster them into concrete product changes 14. use AI inside the app to interpret inputs and surface one clear answer. 15. add a short onboarding quiz so users feel the output is made for them 16. deliver a result worth screenshotting within the first session. add CTAs to share. track the % of people who share and iterate to increase this. 17. place the paywall immediately after the first moment of clarity 18. ship small visible improvements weekly so users feel momentum 19. iterate in public so content doubles as changelog and proof 20. measure virality through shares and installs per view, not follower count 21. design outputs users want to send to friends without explanation 22. own multiple posting accounts early t...
2026 is the GREATEST time to build a startup in 30 years I’m 36. I’ve sold 3 startups, helped build companies that raised billions, and backed teams from seed to unicorn. 20 MEGA shifts that make this the BEST time to build in a GENERATION: 1. Hardware got smart. Download open-source AI models from HuggingFace to cheap robots and they're suddenly smart. Opens up tons of use-cases. 2. SaaS is imploding. AI can replicate $500K software for pennies. Enterprise software that took 30 engineers now requires 1 and a Claude Code subscription. Founders will go more niche and more custom and outprice incumbents. 3. Outcome-based pricing is eating subscriptions. With AI agents handling work automatically, founders can guarantee results instead of selling features. This creates a massive arbitrage opportunity to steal market share from rigid subscription models. 4. Vibe marketing is the new marketing. AI agents/tools like Lindy, Gemini and Claude Code Using agents to do personalized outreach, ads and content creation it’s getting good. This is like getting on social in 2005. 5. Social is FYP-ified. Distribution no longer requires massive followings, just content that hits. Founders can build audience from zero without ads and then convert them to owned media channels (text/email). 6. Interfaces are vanishing. Conversations are replacing dashboards across industries. This removes training barriers and means customers can use sophisticated products immediately. 7. Companies are obsessed with efficiency and cutting costs right now. Corporate budgets are getting reallocated to AI. Companies are cutting traditional software spend to make room for AI-powered alternatives. This creates fast-tracked approvals for startups delivering 10x efficiency. 8. 99% of MVPs won't need VC. Low-cost MVPs combined with creator partnerships and AI automation allow bootstrapped scaling. For most software businesses, outside funding is now unnecessary. 9. Global teams. You don’t need to hi...
I find this extremely lame and i'll call it out. All of these X accounts are fake based in India or "West Asia" yet pretty well-known people interact with them and follow them. Someone creates an account claims a role at a frontier AI lab based in SF (it's a lie), and then mostly curates smart-sounding charts, threads, and takes from other people usually without credit. They often use the format "this guy literally xyz...." Over time, a network of these accounts boosts each other, making the signals look even stronger, and my guess is that the endgame is selling influence, distribution, or “growth” or AI automation services once the audience is large enough. I have seen tons of these accounts recently and maybe you have too.
The guy who built Claude code admitted that it started as a side project 🤯
Bill Gurley (@bgurley) CLEARLY outlines his AI thesis in 14 minutes to Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) 1. Every real tech shift that creates wealth also attracts speculation, and the two usually show up together 2. AI looks like an industrial wave where real companies and workflows get built, even while money moves too fast around it 3. Fast gains pull in people chasing exposure, which explains the rise of SPVs, loose deal structures, and crowded trades 4. Big companies take more risk when they feel like they’re winning, which is how all these circular AI deals start to appear 5. Private markets demand experience because outcomes swing hard and information stays messy 6. The biggest AI returns already happened early, which makes later bets harder and way more selective 7. Large model companies focus on core platforms, leaving plenty of room in specific industries and workflows 8. The strongest AI businesses live inside real day-to-day work, where systems get stitched together. 9. Becoming fluent with AI inside your own field is one of the smartest career moves right now. Its sound obvious but so true. 10. "I dont care what field you are in you should be playing with this AI stuff. Be the most AI-enabled version of yourself"
FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING A $60K MRR MOBILE APP LIKE THIS 1. Start with a behavior people already have. Sleeping already happens every night, so the snoring app fits naturally into an existing routine! 2. Tie the app to a question people already think about. “Do I snore?” often comes up through partners, jokes, or health concerns, so curiosity exists before the app. This makes your life easier. 3. Use AI to interpret the signal for the user. The app turns raw audio into meaning by identifying when snoring happens and surfacing what matters. Tons of niches/ideas are opened up to BECAUSE of AI right now. 4. Deliver the answer immediately. You wake up, open the app, and see the result from the night before. Builds the daily habit. 5. Make the result easy to show. Short audio clips and simple visuals turn into five-second videos, which makes organic sharing effortless. Virality goes up. Helps with CAC and compounding. 6. Keep the scope narrow and intentional. The app focuses on one problem instead of becoming a full sleep platform, which keeps it useful and easy to understand. And the name reflects it too. Says what it does. Autosnore. Snoring recorder. Perfect. 7. Charge for clarity and peace of mind. People happily pay to remove uncertainty, especially around health and relationships. This pattern shows up across a lot of categories because these moments exist everywhere. @ideabrowser has shared a bunch of these ideas. If people already do the behavior, already ask the question, and react emotionally to the answer, there’s probably a product there. The fastest way to test it is simple: ship a rough version, show the output on video, and see if people lean in. The response usually tells you quickly whether it’s worth going deeper. There are more "dumb" categories like this than people realize
“im gonna build a snoring recorder” “that’s dumb” *proceeds to make $60k a month
I'll say the quiet parts out loud: A lot of AI companies that raised $10M, $50M, even $250M+ have SERIOUS churn problems. A lot of AI products get tried because they’re the cool new thing. People sign up, poke around, feel the wow moment, tell a friend, maybe even pay for a month or two. Then real life kicks in and the subscription quietly gets canceled 3-6 months later. I call this "vibe revenue". Money that comes from curiosity, novelty, or FOMO rather than a product becoming essential to someone’s workflow. People pay because it’s cool to try, not because they can’t imagine their week without it. The dangerous part is that vibe revenue looks exactly like PMF at first!! Growth curves go up and to the right. Feedback sounds positive. Founders keep saying “this is the worst the models will ever be.” when confronted with churn. If I had a nickel, everytime I heard that! But the truth is better models don’t automatically create habits. They don’t fix shallow integration or give a product staying power. In AI, switching costs are low and alternatives show up weekly. Curiosity can carry revenue longer than it should, especially when capital is plentiful. Some of these companies will keep raising. Many will hit a wall when retention tells the full story. A lot of employees who on paper will think they are millionaires will learn this lesson the hard way. The businesses that survive feel different. They get used on boring days, stressful days, and busy days. They don’t rely on wow moments. They earn a permanent slot in how work actually happens and they'll deserve the valuation, the funding etc. Vibe revenue, it's everywhere. Stay safe out there. Am I wrong?
Once make your first $1 from the internet, it literally rewires your brain. It turns the internet from something you scroll into something you can send ideas through, get value back and see your life change in real time.
RT ∩ Huge announcement: We're hiring a Product Designer for Share Aura. This will be our 3rd FT designer, the first time we are hiring publicly. So far, the product has been built obsessively by myself, @nattsaro, @jonnokim, and a handful of talented contractors, like @samdape. I live inside Figma with @nattsaro 16 hours a day- to build the next great running/tracking app- on top of sharing, creativity, and unique features that have never been built before. Since starting the app last February, I saw everything in two phases: Phase 1: Build a sharing app and get hundreds of thousands of users- focus on extreme, untouchable distribution Phase 2: Build the best running-tracking app in the world- on top of 2-3 ridiculous ideas Almost a year later, this plan worked. And now it's time to begin Phase 2. And we need some insane, obsessed, addicted-to-the-game designers to get there. If you or someone you know is interested- DM me on here, or email at [email protected] In early 2026, Phase 2 of Share Aura begins. A sharing app. A tracking app. And so, so much more. Original tweet: https://x.com/zachpogrob/status/2001356408650903731
how to design apps nowadays characters are the new apps personality is the new UX conversation is the new UI
People are tired of cookie-cutter, minimalistic design. It's soulless. Design like this is coming back.
What happens to the App Store when vibe coding makes building apps 100× faster and cheaper? A few things I think start to happen: 1. Apps increasingly launch for very specific moments instead of trying to keep users forever. You download it, get value, and move on. 2. Apps that solve a problem in under 30 seconds convert 2–3× better than apps that require onboarding. 3. A new pricing norm emerges: ~$1–$10 for one moment of value, paid instantly, with no expectation of future use. Disposable apps. 4. More examples of revenue concentrating at the account level, not the app level. You'll see seven/eight/even 9 igures across dozens of micro-apps. 5. Some of the most valuable apps never appear in App Store rankings because they spread peer-to-peer and are super niche. 6. Founders start shipping 10-20 micro-apps per year, expecting 1–2 to stick, instead of betting everything on one product. 7. The average successful app team trends toward 1–2 people, even at $1–5M ARR, because product surfaces stay small. 8. Distribution shifts toward people with trust. Creators, communities, and group chats quietly become the real app curators. 9. More extremely niche apps that didn't make sense to build are now being launched 10. Apps get named like content, not companies. Short, emotional, contextual names win. 11. App naming converges toward 5–8 character names because they perform better in links, sharing, and memory. 12. Apps win on tone and identity more than features. Two apps can do the same thing, but one feels like it’s “for you.” 13. The fastest growing category becomes “utility + identity” apps, tools that also signal taste or values. 14. Personalization becomes default. The same underlying app shows up in different versions depending on who you are and why you’re using it. 15. Launches start to look like content drops. Timing, story, and where an app shows up matter more than the tech itself. 16. Successful apps group into small bundles that match a lifes...
1/11 1/ a friendly, clear and firm tones yield better, more direct results2/11 4/ draft, plan, then act. use AI to generate an outline or rough version first3/11 3/ a well-defined box produces a more creative result than an empty field4/11 2/ state your request as a clear, action-oriented command with all necessary details5/11 6/ explaining the why behind an instruction helps the AI understand your true intent6/11 5/ demand structured output. the AI is fluent in many formats beyond prose.7/11 9/ using advanced prompting terms can trigger more sophisticated modes of operation (this might be my fav one)8/11 8/ give the AI a template or example to guide its structure and style9/11 7/ explicitly command the AI to be more or less verbose to match your needs10/11 10/ for a complex task, act as a conductor. prompt for each part separately then prompt for the synthesis.11/11 i walked through my deck in today's episode of @startupideaspod you can also watch on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xob-2a1OnvA happy prompting.
I find this interesting. Shopify just introduced a way to run simulated customers through your store, and at first it feels a little strange, almost like cheating. Up until now, the only way to learn what was broken in your funnel was to push it live, pray someone showed up, and then watch the inevitable hiccups happen in real time. It's stressful, expensive, and half the time you didn’t even know if the data told the truth or just reflected a bad Tuesday realistically. A simulator changes the emotional rhythm of building. You suddenly get space to explore, to adjust copy, to tighten flows, to fix friction without the pressure of an audience. It’s the difference between practicing a speech in an empty room versus delivering it cold on stage.....the outcome might be the same, but the experience is completely different. The bigger idea here is that the cost of learning drops which is key especially for early stage founders. When learning gets cheaper, founders try more things. When founders try more things, the product tends to move in the right direction faster. 90% cool, 10% kinda weird though. I wonder what happens when every founder gets this kind of rehearsal space. Let's see.
Today we started rolling out SimGym — a system that creates “digital customers” that behave like real ones. They browse your site, complete tasks, and reveal optimization opportunities. You can even run A/B tests with *zero* live traffic! Spent a year developing it.
Retirement adds years because it removes chronic stress and puts people back on their own schedule. Some of the healthiest older people I know keep working, but they work with autonomy and purpose instead of pressure.
Lots of studies validate this. The earlier you retire, the older you live. Something to do with social status.
[ THE BLUEPRINT TO MODERN COMPANY BUILDING ] It’s insane. Linus shared that Linus Tech Tips earned $26M from YouTube ads and $260M in total revenue, all without outside capital from VCs. The story show a new way to form companies. Let’s break it down together. Linus makes tech content at a level that feels like a mix of MythBusters, Consumer Reports, and a startup lab. The videos require talent, gear, sets, editing, testing, and endless experimentation. It’s a good niche because people want to spend $. - The ads paid for the early team, and the team created better videos. - Better videos brought in more viewers. - More viewers started watching for longer and forming real trust. - That trust opened the door for sponsorships, merch, hardware, and new shows. - More viewers brought in more ad revenue. - The revenue funded even better talent, better gear, and more ambitious ideas. - The ideas improved the content, which pulled in even more people. - Each cycle added more momentum to the entire company. - The YouTube ads acted like Linus’s VCs, and the audience acted like his board!!! LTT used this loop to build a full production studio, specialized teams, Labs, a warehouse, a testing facility, and an entire content ecosystem pulled forward by long-form attention and the dollars attached to it. The same engine launched merch, creator tools, custom hardware, spin-off channels, and new shows until the channel evolved into a modern media company with real reach and product power. I tested this model recently and felt the same momentum in a WAY SMALLER way. @ideabrowser formed inside my YouTube audience before it existed anywhere else. I shared startup ideas on @startupideaspod , and people wanted tools, prompts, and trend data that gave them an edge. Their questions shaped the roadmap. Their enthusiasm fueled the build. Early users arrived straight from long-form content, and YouTube ads created room for exploration and deeper thinking. Within 6 months, @ideabro...
The Linus Tech Tips channel has earned around $26 million from YouTube ads over its lifetime Creator Linus Sebastian also added that the ad revenue only makes up about 10% of the company's earnings
You think you’re competing with other people and companies. But you’re actually competing with whatever steals those 20 minutes.
"people don't download apps anymore" meanwhile, this is the greatest time to be building mobile apps since 2012
closing in on 100,000 downloads to my 1.5 month old app @lovelee_app :) funny because i thought i was CRAZY setting a $5k/month goal for a brand new app by end of year (8 week challenge) but guess i should trust myself more
this tweet pissed a lot of people off, and I get why. on the surface, “acquire a niche business, grow distribution, add AI, recycle cash” sounds like an oversimplification (and it is). I wrote it because I think it’s a pattern we’re going to see A LOT more of. the interest in buying businesses is already rising. look at Bending Spoons buying Evernote, Vimeo and Meetup and plugging them into a shared product and growth engine. constellation software did a version of this without AI. m y point is the tools are now much better, the playbook is spreading, and this is becoming realistic for smaller operators like me and you. what changed in 2026 is the leverage available to the operator. you can buy a fairly priced, boring business and use tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini, Zapier, Lindy, and a dozen others to ship new features, modernize the product, clean up onboarding, tighten funnels, and open channels the previous owner never had the time or skills to explore. that doesn’t remove the knife fight of hiring, retention, service, or operations. it just means the upside from doing those hard things well is higher than before. so yes, the 4 steps are a simplification. they leave out the plumbing, the pain, and the people. but they still describe a real emerging lane: buy real businesses at sane prices, layer on modern internet distribution, give them an AI-augmented product and growth engine, and use the cash flow to repeat the process. and maybe one person reading this was inspired to go and explore it in 2026. that'd be cool. i know i'll be buying more in 2026 and you can DM if you want to sell your company to me. I think this will create a lot of millionaires. and yeah, like startups, it’s tough work. way more people will fail than succeed, that's the way it goes. but my only point is that this trend is real, and I genuinely believe it’s easier to buy a business and grow it than start from zero. call me crazy.
There’s a whole new generation of founders who are going to buy businesses and turn them into holding companies with software and AI: how they’ll do it: step 1: acquire niche business at an attractive price step 2: create internet distribution to scale customer base step 3:
There’s a whole new generation of founders who are going to buy businesses and turn them into holding companies with software and AI: how they’ll do it: step 1: acquire niche business at an attractive price step 2: create internet distribution to scale customer base step 3: build AI-assisted software to increase margins/make product more attractive step 4: recycle cash-flow to buy more businesses
the most painful yet thrilling part of being a founder is how close or far you are from "it working" without knowing it
THANKSGIVING THOUGHT: the measure of a good life is something I call the pinch me ratio. it’s how often you pause in the middle of a normal day and think, “wow… I actually get to live like this.” sometimes it comes from tiny things: a quiet hot coffee in the morning, sunlight hitting your office just right, the peace of knowing nobody owns your calendar. and sometimes it comes from the big stuff, the moments where your 16 year old self would look at your life and say... “are you kidding me? we get to do that for work!?” those moments matter JUST as much as the small ones. together they tell you whether you’re actually living the life you spent years trying to build, or just sprinting past all the parts that make it worth building. when my ratio is high, everything feels aligned. when it’s low, it’s usually a sign I’ve drifted into autopilot. this thanksgiving is a nice reset for the pinch me ratio. count the tiny and big things that make you pause and think “yeah, this is pretty great.” it’s a simple way to notice the parts of your life that are actually working. i want you to have a good life. keep going.
2026 AI predictions 1. SaaS and agents merge completely in 2026. Every SaaS product becomes an agent platform, and every agent platform builds SaaS features. The ones that don't adapt die or get bought for pennies. 2. Google continues to crush in 2026. OpenAI feels the heat. Doubles down into becoming a social company, lots of features that you'd think a Meta would create 3. Infinite-context entertainment kills pilot season. Netflix lets you continue cancelled shows just for yourself. AI generates new episodes of The Office or Friends dynamically based on your mood. 4. Micro-companies explode in volume and weirdness. Tiny AI-augmented businesses serving tiny online tribes become a real career path. 5. Personalized nutrient cocktails created by generative AI replace traditional OTC wellness. Supplements turn into real-time prescriptions and the vitamin aisle collapses. 6. AI agents get their own wallets. Agents transact with each other using crypto for data, API calls, and compute. The machine economy surpasses the human one in transaction count. 7. The return of the invite-only web. To escape the bot-flooded “dead internet,” the best platforms become gated and reputation-scored. The open web becomes a wasteland; the gated web becomes the party. 8. Search is replaced by answer synthesis. Browsers read 50 sources and give you the conclusion. SEO dies and “LLM optimization” becomes the new marketing arms race. 9. Hardware returns with a vengeance. Browser-based AI feels limiting, so AI pins, earbuds, and ambient devices take off. The smartphone’s decline becomes visible. 10. Google, Apple, and OpenAI accidentally build the new internet. Instead of browsing websites, people live inside model-powered environments. 11. Personalized education unbundles the university. Students learn faster from AI tutors than professors. Harvard becomes a networking club; learning happens through adaptive agents. 12. The first agent-driven media companies appear. Daily shows,...
