ANC

Empowering Innovation, Nurturing Ventures. 🚀 We are an AI company driving growth in home improvement, healthcare, personal finance and more.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

ApplyBoard destroyed Canadian immigration.

For the first time in 25 years.

Most Canadians say there's too much immigration.

$550M raised.

Ontario Teachers. La Caisse. BDC. Fidelity.

10 years in business.

Never disclosed a profit.

Not a tech company.

A commission shop sold as a unicorn.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Here's what nobody is connecting:

We never owned our safety. We were leasing it.

Every two weeks your paycheck auto-renews the lease.

Until one morning it doesn't.

AI didn't cause this.

AI just made the lease visible faster in tech.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Blackstone manages $1.3 trillion and 250+ companies.

Today they co-founded a $1.5B venture with Anthropic.

To deploy Claude across the portfolio.

The portfolio companies didn't get a vote.

Their owner picked their AI.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Anthropic's Mythos is alarming Powell and Bessent.

They just summoned top CEOs to Washington.

Mythos can break into your phone, laptop, and bank.

It wasn't told to. It just found ways on its own.

A 27-year-old security flaw. Fixed in 10 minutes.

Another survived 5 million security checks intact.

Trump spent a year trying to fire Powell.

Today his Treasury Secretary called him for help.

This is the biggest AI story since ChatGPT.

We are not ready.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

UPDATE: Open-sourced it.

Ghost Narrator - self-hosted AI narration.

LLM rewrites your articles into scripts, voice model reads them. Runs on a Mac.

No API keys. No monthly bill. MIT license.

https://t.co/xOUzbaJp2c

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Everyone has access to the same AI now.

Same answers. Same analysis. Same execution.

The gap isn't who has the best tools.

It's who has the best thinking underneath.

Mental models can't be prompted.

They're earned.

- Years of reading what nobody else read.
- Seeing what nobody else saw.
- Sitting with ideas until they become how you think.

Most people will hand that process to AI.

They'll get faster answers and weaker judgment.

The last edge that can't be automated - isn't what you know.

It's how you see.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

4,000 people woke up employed this morning.

Jack Dorsey fired them one by one throughout today.

By market close, he was $2 billion richer.

Nobody called it theft. They called it innovation.

This is 2026.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Anthropic didn't even launch anything new.

They published a gated ebook. A PDF behind an email form. About automating old banking code.

IBM dropped 13%. Worst single day since 2000. Down 27% this month.

Not a competitor. Not earnings. A PDF.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

An AI startup had $1M in revenue.

On Monday, they were worth $400M.

By Friday, they were worth $1B.

Nothing changed. No new product. No new customers.

Just a second set of investors who paid more.

That's how you become a 'unicorn' in 2026.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Anthropic published a blog post one hour ago.

Cybersecurity stocks have lost $10B since.

CrowdStrike -6.5%. Cloudflare -6%. Okta -5.7%.

One blog post. One hour. $10B gone.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Meta paid $2B for Manus.

A wrapper on Anthropic and Alibaba models.
Rebuildable in weeks.

- $20M/head for 100 employees.
- 8 months to $100M ARR they didn't have to build.
- Millions of users Google won't get.

The founders cashed out.

The product had no moat.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

I used to brag about my 'optimized' SaaS stack.

$2,400/month. 'Essential tools'.

Then I did the 30-year math.

$890,546.

3 Lamborghinis.

- For software I'll never own.
- That'll be obsolete in 2 years.
- While I preach 'forever hold'.

Nobody does this math.

Built a free calculator so you can 👇

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

SimpleDirect monthly burn: $18K

Team: $12K
Tools: $2K
Everything else: $4K

Revenue: $32K
Margin: $14K

That's the reality of 'profitable bootstrapped startup.'

Not glamorous.
Not exit money.

But I control everything.

VCs would call this 'lifestyle business.'

I call it sovereignty.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

I applied to Y Combinator 5 times. Got rejected 5 times.

The last rejection was May 5, 2022, at 7:56 PM in a Thai restaurant in Toronto.

That night I stopped playing their game.

3 years later: $2.35M, 5 employees, no VC.

Here's the math they don't want you to see:

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

I run multiple businesses from Toronto with 5 people.

We compete with 50-person teams that raised millions.

No VC. No SF office. No fancy headquarters.

Here's the framework that makes it possible:

Capital, Code, Audience (The 3Cs)

And why most founders get all three wrong 👇

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

Bootstrap founders know nobody's saving us.

No investors.
No bailout round.
No board to fix our mistakes.

Just us and our decisions.

So we:
- Keep burn at $6K, not $40K
- Build 18 months of reserves, not 3
- Don't wait for 'better market conditions'

VC-backed founders need the next round.

We built to never need it.

That's not pessimism.
That's freedom.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

MVPs are dead.

Even 'minimum viable' is too slow.

No signup flow. No onboarding. No settings page.

Ship something ugly in 3 days. Let users complain. Fix it live.

Everyone has AI now. Everyone can build.

The edge isn't shipping faster.

It's being willing to ship uglier.

Your competitors are still planning their MVP.

You should already have users.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

I truly believe one person can outcompete a 50-person team now.

Not because I'm smarter.

Because I'm not waiting for approval.

No board to convince. No committee to align. No Slack thread with 47 opinions.

Just me, Claude, and 48 months to figure it out.

Some days that's terrifying.

Most days it's freedom.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

A VC posted: ‘You sold for $100M, what do you buy?’

500+ founders commented about Lambos.

Not one asked: ‘How much do I actually get?’

Here's what actually happens:

Mike Farley sold Tile for $205M in 2021.

$205M exit
-$141M raised (liquidation prefs)
-dilution
-taxes

= $800K/year for 10 years

Meta E6 (Staff Engineer): $800K/year. With weekends.

He built a product millions use daily.
Did everything the VC playbook says.

And barely beat a job.

This is why I stay profitable and own 100%.

[George Pu @TheGeorgePu]

May 2022: Fourth YC rejection

My co-founder: 'We'll try again next time.'

Me, walking alone by the lake:

I don't want a next time.

- I just want to build something real.
- Something people pay for.
- Something I actually control.

That night I stopped chasing approval.

Started chasing profit.

Everything got better.