Focus and simplicity
Joined June 2010
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Mikhael Traverse retweeted
There’s a method taught at Y Combinator that turns 4 weeks of GTM research into 3 hrs.
And no, it’s not typing “research the market for X” into Claude.
You start by feeding it raw material:
→ 25-40 competitor websites, fully scraped (pricing pages, case studies, docs)
→ The last few earnings calls from the 3-5 biggest incumbents
→ 100+ customer reviews (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, app stores)
→ Every Reddit or forum thread where people vent about the category
Then ask questions that force it to think, not summarize:
1. “What do the winners in this market know that their customers would never admit?”
2. “List the beliefs this whole industry takes for granted. For each one, what would need to happen for it to be false?”
In about 20 min, you’ll see where everyone agrees, where everyone is blind, and which customer pains nobody is building for.
Now flip it. Pick your best angle and tell Claude to tear it apart:
“Steelman this thesis like a top-tier VC would. Then show me exactly where it fails.”
Do a few rounds of that. 3 hours later, you’ll have a first GTM hypothesis that sounds like it came from a 10-year industry veteran.
The trick is treating Claude as a sparring partner that never gets tired and never gets defensive when it’s wrong.
But remember: it’s still just a hypothesis. The real work starts when you talk to actual buyers.
To get there fast, use Gojiberry to find and reach the right people to test it with.
Customer conversations are the only thing that matters.
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
When AI makes you 10x faster at coding, CI becomes the bottleneck. I got ours from 40 minutes down to 2.
Here's everything I did:
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
The future is going to be so weird. Now we’ll be automatically stealing alpha from competitors.
It’ll be even if you are single person and they are a behemoth.
Introducing /REA-growth skill
Reverse-engineer any company's growth
- Name any company, get its growth blueprint
- Every move on its timeline: SEO, AEO, ads, social
- $0.58 for a full Lovable teardown
- Fully OpenSource
Try it at treg.to/rea-growth
Partnered with @sharenow_today
Repo link below 👇
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
in @ycombinator they teach you how to do growth in a very specific way (which is very different in 2026 than prior)
Here’s the new best ways to get customers via outbound:
1/ offer absurd value in your 1st message
- if the lead is running ads → offer a few ad concepts you think would work better
-if they launched an affiliate program → offer a shortlist of partners already promoting similar products
-if they’re launching a product → a list of creators you recommend to help them do distribute
etc, etc. - these types of outbound offers absolutely CRUSH in 2026 - you’d have to be a fool to turn them down.
2/ breaking outside the norms on channels
everyone’s inbox is full of the same AI-written paragraphs so give them something different.
-if they posted about a problem → send a voice note with how you’d approach it
-if you spot something you could improve on their website→ record a 60-second loom showing exactly what you’d change
-if you build something for them → send a quick video walking through it
People LOVE and value authenticity more than anything now, these types of messages actually perform BETTER now in 2026 than pre-AI
voice notes, loom videos
3/ consider invitations if you’re closing $10k+ contracts
In your outbound email/message, give people a reason to meet you before asking them to buy from you.
-host a small dinner → invite a handful of people in the same industry who’d benefit from knowing each other
-start a company youtube show → invite prospects on to talk about something they know better than you
-offer to visit their office → shoot content about their business and give them the clips to post
you get a relationship + they get connections, exposure, or content they can actually use.
And yes, you can fully automate all 3 parts of this with the demo in the vid, here’s how:
1/ setup Auto-reply agent with a custom offer in Origami
2/ record a voice sample in origami, let it clone + add them to your messages
3/ Steer the campaigns to orient around invitations
will be back posting 2-3 more growth hacks every single week
Today, we’re introducing Origami v2.
We now offer a fully autonomous growth team of 6 AI workers.
These are trained to land you customers on 10,000+ outbound campaigns.
Activate your team, just enter your domain at origami.chat
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
Made a video with @ycombinator on how to launch.
I hope this helps someone out there finally get their first 1000 views, first customers, whatever. This is a game of consistency, not one time viral hits.
TLDR: Record a shitty demo, and just start showing your work.
There’s a misconception that a successful launch video needs to cost tens of thousands of dollars and feel like a high production commercial. But @FarzaTV has a different approach.
Farza is the founder of @heyclicky and previously built Buildspace, one of the largest online schools for people working on their own ideas. He’s been making videos for over a decade, and today his posts regularly get millions of views. Rather than treating launches as rare, high-stakes moments, he’s made them part of the everyday process of building a company.
Farza sat down with YC’s @aaron_epstein to share his playbook for turning demos into stories people actually want to watch. He breaks down how he scripts videos that still feel off the cuff, why founders should launch constantly, and and how to figure out which channels actually convert.
01:44 — Launch Constantly
03:38 — Start Shipping Demos
05:02 — Show the Process
06:07 — The Clicky Launch
07:43 — Write a Hook That Stops the Scroll
10:30 — Why Farza Scripts Every Video
12:04 — Designing the First 10 Seconds
15:15 — Demo-Driven Development
17:25 — You Have to Take a Thousand Shots
20:48 — Farza’s Formula for Videos That Convert
23:01 — Turning Demos Into Stories
24:53 — Show What You're Actually Building
29:11 — Finding Customers on Social Media
31:02 — Which Platforms Actually Convert?
39:01 — Why Farza’s First Hire Was a Filmmaker
40:49 — The Video Stack
45:41 — The 30-Day Launch Challenge
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
There’s a misconception that a successful launch video needs to cost tens of thousands of dollars and feel like a high production commercial. But @FarzaTV has a different approach.
Farza is the founder of @heyclicky and previously built Buildspace, one of the largest online schools for people working on their own ideas. He’s been making videos for over a decade, and today his posts regularly get millions of views. Rather than treating launches as rare, high-stakes moments, he’s made them part of the everyday process of building a company.
Farza sat down with YC’s @aaron_epstein to share his playbook for turning demos into stories people actually want to watch. He breaks down how he scripts videos that still feel off the cuff, why founders should launch constantly, and and how to figure out which channels actually convert.
01:44 — Launch Constantly
03:38 — Start Shipping Demos
05:02 — Show the Process
06:07 — The Clicky Launch
07:43 — Write a Hook That Stops the Scroll
10:30 — Why Farza Scripts Every Video
12:04 — Designing the First 10 Seconds
15:15 — Demo-Driven Development
17:25 — You Have to Take a Thousand Shots
20:48 — Farza’s Formula for Videos That Convert
23:01 — Turning Demos Into Stories
24:53 — Show What You're Actually Building
29:11 — Finding Customers on Social Media
31:02 — Which Platforms Actually Convert?
39:01 — Why Farza’s First Hire Was a Filmmaker
40:49 — The Video Stack
45:41 — The 30-Day Launch Challenge
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
Greatest unlock for any startup founder or anyone who has to get in touch with the right people
Happenstance is "if LinkedIn and Claude and ChatGPT had a baby." - @rubenhassid
How Ruben finds the warm path to exactly who he needs across 800,000+ people in his network:
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
My favorite thing @om wrote was actually an interview with Brunello Cucinelli in 2015. And to this day, I think it’s the single best thing you can read on running a business. Better than any book, better than any article.
Read it:
om.co/2015/04/27/brunello-cu…
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
talked to a bunch of current YC batch founders today
The ones hitting $1m+ ARR (there are several this batch) are just ripping the same outbound playbook every time:
1. build your lead lists using tools like Origami or Clay
2. Run an auto-connect + DM sequencer on LinkedIn
3. aim for 200 connects/week. linkedin is a goldmine
4. when writing Linkedin DMs, send 2-sentences, ideally with a warm thread (shared school, mutual, etc)
5. Post on LinkedIn 5x/wk minimum
6. get good at AEO (yes, you can get results in a few weeks )
Spend 20 hrs/wk doing this properly, and you will start consistently booking demos
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
说实话，Garry Tan 这篇长帖，是我今年看到的最重要的 AI 文章，没有之一。
大多数人看完估计只会惊叹：“哇，这个读书工具好厉害。”
但他们其实并没看懂，这不仅仅是一个工具，说是一份 AI 时代个人能力的指数级放大说明书更合适一些。
先看那个最震撼的案例：
Book Mirror。
把一本 162 页的书扔进去，40 分钟后，产出 3 万字的深度脑页。
注意，这可不是普通的读书笔记，
而是要把作者的每一个观点，都精准映射到他自己的人生里——
他的家庭历史、YC 工作、治疗笔记、和几百个创始人的对话。
相当于这本书的作者专门花了两天时间，只和他一对一深聊，并且只聊和他最相关的那部分。
比 $300/小时的治疗师高效 50 倍以上，而且这已经远远超越普通 RAG。
普通 RAG 只能检索，
🤖 Made with AI
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
🚨 Anthropic's own team just showed how to actually use Claude Code properly.
30 minutes. free. the person who created Claude Code.
watch the workshop. bookmark it.
worth more than every $500 course you almost bought.
you've been using Claude without knowing 40 of its commands.
Then read the guide below.
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
This 2 hour Stanford lecture shows exactly how Stanford trains it's engineers to build AI systems. It's more practical than every Claude tutorial & prompting threads you've seen.
Bookmark & give it 2 hours, no matter what. It'll be the most productive thing you do this weekend.
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
These boxes are static.
I repeat, these boxes are not moving.
teapawt.org/i/status/1476088226427…
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
The real moats in 2025: specific workflows, proprietary data with real switching costs, distribution, and UX that makes AI disappear into the job-to-be-done.
Simultaneously: we are early (only a % are using AI properly) so this is an amazing time to start a startup.
Benedict Evans' new presentation just dropped: "AI eats the world"
90 slides on macro and strategic trends in tech.
His biannual overview is always worth the time:
ben-evans.com/presentations
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
TheHog.ai is the Google Maps for customer acquisition. It finds the most optimized routes to reach your customers and turns scattered data into clear next steps.
It's the all-in-one GTM and marketing tool that gives one person the power of an entire sales and marketing team.
Mikhael Traverse retweeted
Nano Banana + Veo 3 + n8n is legitimately wild 🤯
This automation generates hundreds of UGC videos from a single product photo.
Fully automated inside n8n.
Perfect for DTC brands & creative agencies scaling paid social.
Most brands face the same bottleneck:
You need 50+ creative variations to beat ad fatigue.
But creating scripts, filming, and editing that volume takes weeks and costs thousands.
This n8n system solves it:
→ Drop ONE product image into n8n form
→ Nano Banana creates 20-50 visual variations automatically
→ Each variation flows into Veo 3 for video generation
→ AI generates natural UGC scenarios (unboxings, demos, testimonials)
→ Videos auto-saved to Box for instant access
No scripting.
No filming.
No editing bottlenecks.
What you get:
Dozens of UGC videos from one upload → Costs pennies per video → Full commercial ownership → Perfect for testing angles at scale
Built 100% in n8n.
Want the complete workflow?
> Comment "BANANA"
> Like this post
And I'll send it over (must be following so I can DM)