helping founders to take better (and faster) decisions
Joined September 2009
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top of hn today: ubuntu still hasn't shipped a kernel patch for a linux 0day rce, almost three weeks in. users forgive bugs. what burns trust is the silence about when the fix lands.
ai made writing free, so a long pitch proves nothing now. the only part of a deck i still read is the list of people who did something that cost them. everything else is formatting. convince me otherwise.
hn is arguing that ai for everyone costs a tenth of a kettle a day. the bill founders actually feel is per user: a solo dev on reddit just capped each ai research run at 40 cents because 30 runs ate his whole $12 plan
juan atkins has died at 64. a kid from belleville with a cheap synth and a futurist reading list helped invent techno. every bedroom producer opening a daw tonight walks through a door he built. rest easy
scores don't change founder behavior. a 4/10 says stop, and nobody who quit their job for this idea is going to stop. what actually moves people is a name, a reaction, a reason v2 is different. disagree?
in amsterdam a meeting ends on time and nothing gets decided after. in sicily it runs an hour late and the deal closes at dinner. i've stopped calling one efficient. they just keep the real conversation in different rooms
stack overflow logged under 1,000 new questions last month. the questions didn't stop, they moved into private chat windows. the public record of what people actually struggle with is shrinking, and that's where founders used to look
a waitlist signup is the cheapest yes in startups. nobody ever lost anything by typing an email. if your validation can't fail, it isn't validation. tell me where i'm wrong
a us founder sells the story and fixes the numbers later. a european founder fixes the numbers and never tells the story. i keep watching dutch teams with real revenue lose rooms to decks with none. both are missing half the pitch
a techno dj on r/beatmatch asked if he's doing it wrong because he barely touches the controller for 4 minutes after a blend. on instagram that looks lazy. on a dancefloor it's called letting the track work. it's the first thing we teach on Seedj
deepmind shipped genie 4, a world model good enough to train agents inside. founders will use it to simulate users next. a simulated user can click through your app forever and never once decide it isn't worth the money
most "customer discovery" is a founder explaining their product to someone too polite to interrupt. if you talked more than they did, it was a pitch with extra steps. change my mind
validation is boring (and expensive, and slow).
try validating.studio, and you won't get stuck in user interviews anymore.
people will tell you your idea is great right up until the moment they are asked to pay for it. we built a place where the second moment comes first.
a prototype used to prove commitment. now it proves you had a weekend. the only artifact that still can't be generated is someone else wanting it.
three 'best of 2026' roundups recommended a pricing tier that no longer exists. the internet quotes itself. buyers don't. ask them.
a free tool that tells amazon flex drivers if their station is closed earns $632 a week in voluntary donations. nobody donates to a landing page. people pay after the thing already saved them a trip. that's the cleanest demand signal there is.
a livestream sold $370k of underwear in one month. the operator's takeaway wasn't the influencer, it was the 10% return rate in a category where returns are brutal. revenue measures the pitch. returns measure the product.