Erica Spooner * The Soft Architect

Bryant Chou (@bryantchou) co-founded Webflow, which today powers around 1% of all websites on the internet. Now he's back in the current YC batch with @ployai, an AI-powered website and marketing platform that doesn't just build your site — it connects to your analytics, CRM, and search console to optimize your marketing while you sleep. In this episode of the @LightconePod, he explains how he built Ploy to be “anti slop,” how building today compares to his first startup, and why founders with domain expertise are making a comeback. 0:45 — What Ploy Is Building 2:21 — Redesigning Old YC Startup Websites 6:01 — Better Design, Better Storytelling 7:08 — Democratizing Marketing and Growth 10:39 — Rebuilding a Website in 75 Seconds 14:04 — Your Website as a Company Brain 18:23 — Building the Anti-Slop Design Engine 21:01 — Why Bryant Came Back to the Web 24:04 — Building in a Competitive Market 27:55 — The Future of AI-Native Marketing 34:18 — Why Experienced Founders Have an Edge

I think it's healthy for us in the Ethereum world to have a more bold and open mindset to many things, particularly on the application layer and on how we see ourselves in the world. We should not compromise on core properties: censorship resistance, open source, privacy, security (CROPS). We should not have "open mindedness" of the type that leaves people with no confidence of what security properties the L1 will still have one year from now. We should not ask ourselves questions like "do we really need light clients to be able to trustlessly verify correctness of the chain?". But especially on the layer of applications and Ethereum's interface to the world, we should be more willing to radically rethink various concepts and step outside our comfort zone. This includes issues of technological direction, eg. "what if AI basically means that wallets as browser extensions and mobile extensions are dead within a year?" One example last year was the shift to thinking about privacy as a first-class consideration, something we value equally to the other types of security. This implies a radically different Ethereum application stack, because the entire stack so far has not been built around privacy. Great, let's build a radically different Ethereum application stack! An example this year is the growing work on the networking side of privacy, both inside the EF and outside. It includes application-layer issues, eg. "what if the rest of defi is basically just universal futures markets on top of a good decentralized oracle and letting users self-organize on top of that?", and "what if the ideal decentralized oracle is just a SNARK over M-of-N small LLMs over zk-TLSes of some major news sites?" (BTW this is interrelated with the AI issue: one consequence of AI is that it moves "applications" away from being discrete categories of behavior with discrete UIs, and more toward being a continuous space, so "build fewer apps and rely on users to self-organize around them" should inevitably expand as a pattern) One example this year is rethinking from zero the role of L2s, and what kind of L2s are actually most synergistic and additive to Ethereum. It also includes culture. This is a big part of "the whole milady thing" for myself, @AyaMiyagotchi and others. Yes, it's a silly meme. Yes, I find the political takes of some milady partisans cringe and sometimes outright bootlickerish (though other milady partisans are quite the opposite). But the core underlying subtext, the message behind the message, is: rip off the suit and tie. If you have your suit and tie on, be willing to grab the nearest wine glass and spill it all over your suit and tie, so you have no choice but to rip it off and reclaim your body's full flexibility and freedom. Actually imagine yourself doing this the next time you get invited to a richpeopleslop formal gala dinner. Take the preconception that you are "respectable", write it down on a piece of paper, crumble it up and burn it. The psychological baptism of doing this leads to the intellectual baptism of unlocking greater creativity and expanding overton windows. For too long, our algorithm in Ethereum has been: we have this existing ecosystem, what's the logical next step to make it one step better? Now, our algorithm should be: we have this L1 that is amazing and will become more amazing, we have a growing array of tools, both those built within our ecosystem and outside it, what are the most valuable things to build, knowing what we know now? If YOU had to write the section of the 2014 Ethereum whitepaper that talked about applications, and take a first-principles perspective of what makes sense in defi, decentralized social, identity, and elsewhere, what would you write? At least take the step of marking all path-dependence concerns down to zero, pretend for a brief moment that the Ethereum chain today has exactly zero usage and you're the one suggesting or building the first apps, and see what comes out. Do this even if you're the one building today's existing apps. This is how Ethereum can grow back stronger.

gm That one great Beeple event at @LACMA when I was able to meet one of the most experienced, educated, and knowledgeable woman with vision I have encountered here. Newish to this space but certainly not to tech, business, and determination.🫡 @TheSoftArc 🧠

"Asymmetric opportunities: Invest in startups Start a company Create a book, podcast, video Create a (software) product Go on many first dates Go to a cocktail party Read a Lindy book Move to a big city Buy Bitcoin Tweet." @naval