Tim Brunsmo

Entrepreneur | AI native | Building for fun | Always in learning mode | 15+ years bootstrapping | Living in a constant idea storm

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

4) has the patience to build a business.
Vibecoding an app and building a business is two very different things.

I see lots of ambitious souls with amazing energy building their ideas right now. Unfortunately, contradictory to what all your posts on X says, building a business is hard. It does not come for free and Claude cannot magically make you rich.

For those of you pushing through, finding your way and turning that ambition into revenue I salut. For those of you giving up - maybe entrepreneurship’s simply is not for you and that’s ok. It’s not as fun as the instagram stories you see.. it’s constant struggle and war. I love it, but most don’t.

Either way, it’s an amazing time to be alive!

[@levelsio @levelsio]

I think the challenge is that everyone can now build apps

But

1) almost nobody has distribution (like an audience), or

2) the money to pay for distribution (ads or UGC), or

3) the creative genius to get distribution for free (classically called guerilla marketing)

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

Automation is a lie. CLIs are over. The SaaSpocalypse is dumb.

A year ago @danshipper came on the podcast to predict where AI was heading. He was remarkably right—including the call that everyone was sleeping on Claude Code.

Dan has a unique lens into where things are going because his team at @every is possibly the most AI-pilled group of people in tech. I always learn a ton talking to Dan.

So I brought him back for round two. We'll score these in exactly a year:
🔸 Every company will have one “super-agent” in Slack.
🔸 Codex and Claude Code will become the new operating system for knowledge work.
🔸 The AI job apocalypse is not happening.
🔸 PMs and designers will thrive.
🔸 We will read way more AI-generated writing and we will like it.
🔸 "I would buy SaaS stocks right now."

Listen now 👇
https://t.co/wzxQ5bz49h

[Zeb Evans @DJ_CURFEW]

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why.

First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.

Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition.

I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION
The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now.

The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS
I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.
Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed.
So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time?

If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.

I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already.

More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well.

— THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS
Product management and design roles are merging.

Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers.

And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers.

The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results.

The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy.

Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on.

To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production.

Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck.
That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS
Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is.

— THE FRONT-LINERS
In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings.

One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT
In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?
In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them.

You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

THE FUTURE
Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.

ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

[Claude @claudeai]

We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity.

This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

Session limits are the new Pomodoro technique.. hello sun!

[Vercel Developers @vercel_dev]

Introducing deepsec, an open source coding security harness.

• CLI-first
• Sandbox-based scaling
• Pluggable coding agents
• Designed for large-scale repos
• Use AI Gateway or your own subscription

After months of successful internal use, we put it to the test on some of the largest open source codebases.
https://t.co/sPxZ6izJVV

[Stripe @stripe]

Stripe Managed Payments is now generally available. Sell digital products in 195 markets with our merchant of record solution for tax, fraud, disputes, and support.

[Glen Allsopp 👾 @ViperChill]

Big news: Ahrefs just massively increased API limits (at no extra cost). 🥳

As Ahrefs grows in this AI era, we're opening up more data to power your marketing.

Increased API limits have been one of the top requests over the past few months, so I'm excited to be sharing this news.

Changes depend on your account level, but as an example, Standard plans now get 2.67x more credits and up to 10x more rows per request.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be sharing some of the unique tools and workflows Ahrefs powers for my own work.

If you have any cool use cases of your own, I would love to hear those as well. 🙌

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

Agentic web is approaching quickly. Don’t forget to build your software for agents. Not just on a digestion level. Think of how you can supply the market with unique data or actions that is valuable for agents.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Software for Agents
@aaron_epstein

The next trillion users on the internet won't be people. They'll be AI agents, and they're already doing real work on top of software that was designed for humans clicking buttons.

Every major category of software needs to be rebuilt for agents as first-class citizens, and that won't come from incumbents.

[Jerrod Lew @jerrod_lew]

Create custom logo animations with ChatGPT Images 2.0 and Seedance 2.0.

Images 2.0 can create an animation sheet for how a logo should appear.

This can be quite detailed, to help the AI video tool guide how long each section takes.

More in the comments:

[Smooth Operators @SmoothOpsEU]

Wednesday night in Malta. It was a blast.

Builders showed up, got handed a stranger’s idea, and had two hours to ship something real.

Every single one of them delivered.

Thank you to everyone who built, and to everyone who submitted an idea. You made the night what it was.

This is just the beginning.

Just one corner of our builders’ community 👇

[DeepSeek @deepseek_ai]

🚀 DeepSeek-V4 Preview is officially live & open-sourced! Welcome to the era of cost-effective 1M context length.

🔹 DeepSeek-V4-Pro: 1.6T total / 49B active params. Performance rivaling the world's top closed-source models.
🔹 DeepSeek-V4-Flash: 284B total / 13B active params. Your fast, efficient, and economical choice.

Try it now at https://t.co/GCdiMzk1Dl via Expert Mode / Instant Mode. API is updated & available today!

📄 Tech Report: https://t.co/drlDrxkYtp
🤗 Open Weights: https://t.co/T13Y8i7SDM

1/n

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

@SmoothOpsEU Tomorrow we are gathering the local AI builders here in Malta with a build challenge of 2 hours showcasing the power of AI-first coding.

I’m proud of what we built with Smooth Operators, a community for people that is hands-on building or using AI professionally.

See you there

[Vercel @vercel]

We’ve identified a security incident that involved unauthorized access to certain internal Vercel systems, impacting a limited subset of customers. Please see our security bulletin:
https://t.co/0S939n3qHC

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

Cloudflare released https://t.co/3szqqd5ACU, a tool to check how well a website works with AI agents.

It tests discoverability, content access, bot controls, MCP protocol support and agent commerce features.

Tip: it has an mcp, hook it up.

[Cloudflare @Cloudflare]

Today, we are excited to introduce https://t.co/F5gmrAYGFP — a new tool to help site owners understand how they can make their sites optimized for agents. https://t.co/2xAeZlX5AI

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

Read the full analysis:
https://t.co/BnSkb1bimi

SE Ranking report: https://t.co/BKOM3KdNec

#SEO #GoogleUpdate #CoreUpdate

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

Google March 2026 Core Update brought heavy ranking shifts.
- Aggregators and comparison sites felt it the most. Here are the exact numbers and what they mean.

Thread below.

[Tim Brunsmo @TimBrunsmo]

For anyone running an aggregator:
Shift from simple lists to adding your own research, tools, expert input, and details users cannot find on the original sites. Make your platform the one people actually need to visit.