Bubs (Darius Monsef)

Kaili’s Husband. Dad | Founder & CEO || Made: BraveCare, @CreativeMarket | YC W10, S19, S24

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@Winterrose Just putting it out there that you can continue to invest in startups AND get a sick car. Best bang for your buck in a mid-life crisis is a C8!

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Let me know when a Tesla does a Musty … then I’ll be impressed.
👊🏼 @amustycow

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

My dad is 98. You can do the simple math on how many conversations and visits you get with an elder parent... and I'm well into the bonus numbers which I deeply appreciate.

I bought the email-to-book life story products for both my parents... neither finished it and the roadblock I've heard from others was that they felt it was a chore or the answers weren't great. We want to preserve our family stories but the method isn't great.

I built a Voice AI for checking in with the elderly and after several thousand minutes of calls a common feeling from elders was "I loved when I got to share more of my life story" … so I shifted my focus to using Voice AI and a thoughtful, curious and engaging voice to capture a life story and a persons important memories, experiences and values.

Irv (named after my childhood therapist who was a great listener) calls weekly to help record important life stories:

- The question isn't a generic question from a list.

- It's not a daunting blank canvas they have to start with.

Irv finds personal questions that reflect your life, places you've lived, people you care about and feelings you've shared... and if nothing easily flows from a question Irv helps redirect to another angle or topic.

Each week the audio is edited into what feels like a short family podcast episode, which children and grandchildren can hear and engage with. (They can also be kept as a private archive too)

If you have a life story you want preserved, or if you want to save a parents or relatives…

https://t.co/eRnvPN8EdC

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@kevinrose Made a first the other day and now jamming thru a longer original. Down the catch up and share

https://t.co/hrKAIiU1ok

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@alabut Yeah I don’t think customers are the ones quickly building a new solution… it’s anybody motivated to use AI to do a startup.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

RIP Moats. AI has killed nearly all software moats. If you're building a digital product, SaaS, App, etc... You have no moat. Anybody can create your product in hours with a few hundred bucks in tokens.

Sure, your full technical architecture and the robustness of your product would be harder to replicate... but a potential customer doesn't know or doesn't care. Well they probably do care, but now they're bombarded with so much well produced marketing slop, they're a bit option-exhausted and skeptical of everything. Vibe Code Slop vs Handcoded Technical Precision is indistinguishable to a customer.

The quality of short animation ads (I just made one, it's great) that are possible with Opus 5.5... the big budget cinema quality ad you can create with Higgsfield... the fully automated sales funnel of personalized content... everybody is getting it now, everywhere, all the time. Even the plumber in your rural town 6hrs from you is getting startup ads and outbound sales calls/emails.

GTM has never been harder. That doesn't mean it can't be done, but it points to an incredible irony that's happening in tech. Some companies like Instinct will rocket to billion dollar valuations in minutes... doing mostly what other agents can do with some new experience, using the latest model unlocked interactions... likely to be Poked off the top step without a Clue as to why in a few weeks when something new takes the hype-title.

But the tried and true still work for customer validation. Talk to your customers. Do founder led sales to find your first 100 customers. Do the things that don't scale that teach you about your customer and how to better serve them with something useful that adds value to their lives. When people use something that "just works," is priced fairly and is from a brand they have grown trust and have affinity for they'll stick around longer.

What is increasingly true now is there is nothing more important for a startup than distribution and unless you have an unfair advantage to reach your target customers it's going to be very hard for you to clear the clouds with enough usage and engagement to scale into a meaningful company.

Trying to become influential in a space is going to take a lot of time and effort because just like the noise in the product marketing space, all that noise is mostly coming from influencers pumping out content to farm any engagement they can get... and every influencer can automate slopthoughts and AI avatar captioned reels.

We're both in a time where nothing has ever moved faster, and yet maybe, the slow and steady will win over time. So sure, take a big swing, build your ideas, get customers... but be honest about the AI at the gates.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@alabut …but once you solve it and launch it can just get copied… I think distribution is the only savior.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@technoSaas Moat is all distribution now.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@simplydt I think that also depends on your target customer... If you're selling to the earliest tech innovator, they are the first to try something out, but also the first to jump to something new.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@colourlovers Yeah looks like some upgrades!

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

@davemcclure Can also hit hard on the feels
https://t.co/F1wszqdrRW

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

A father’s love

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

P.S. How I made it:
https://t.co/zu9sGvZ9pE

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Making a short cinema quality story with @higgsfield_ai - I saw a moving short and wanted to try and create my own version and add a little to it. Couldn't find great instructions so here is the step by step way to recreating something like:

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

A father’s love

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Have fun making sad videos!

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

The craziest part to me was for the videos of my daughter when she was little, I just gave higgsfield one photo of each age in the character element and it made whole videos of her.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Then for each video I had to describe every shot and usually took some adjusting to get it to angle in the right way and look as I wanted it to.

"Cinematic photorealistic, 16:9. The referenced [man] stands up after climbing thru a broken window and walks and stops offset left center frame. [interior doorway]. He walks in slowly, raising his right arm with the handgun in it. No zoom. steadycam fixed frame shot. Close on his torso: eyes angry, jaw tight, breathing heavily, chest rising and falling. The gun trembles slightly in his hand. He looks at a zombie with anger. his breathing shakes. Sound: only his heavy breathing, no music. No gore, no dialogue, no other people. He is wearing dark dirty canvas jacket, he has short stubble beard. His face is dirty. his shirt under the jacket is tattered and dirty. His hands are dirty."

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Then for my daughter I gave it some recent photos of her face and needed to say young woman because asking for a demon child kept tripping the safety blocks on image gen. Also gave it a hoodie she has as clothing reference.

"Here are reference photos for the young woman's face. Keep it structurally the same. Example sweatshirt style and pants also attached. Now turn the woman into a zombie. Not scary, but very pale skin no expression on her face. hair is oliy and messy. clothes are very dirty. torn, tattered. lips and eyes are dark. face is dirty. make her eyes white milky. skin weathered and totally pale, almost translucent."

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Then I needed to create the characters sheets for visual reference. I gaveAstra a couple photos of my face and one of Rick Grimes and a an outfit I found.

"Now I need to create a character sheet for the man. Here are detailed photos of his face. His clothing should be post apocalyptic.. also attached a reference image for the jacket and hood. Reference photo of a man with a beard and blood on his face for beard and dirty face inspiration. Bring that facial hairstyle and facial texture to the man with high res photo pointing a fingure gun and use his exact facial features."

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

I made the scenes in ChatGPT. Gave Astra the prompts like:

"We are creating background environment scenes to create a short film with AI. You are creating the static image references for the AI to compose into a live video scene. The concept for the video is set in a zombie apocolypse.
To start we need the scene for the first dark end of days environment. Once view facing where he will be so looking towards the doorway of an old broken down house, dirty walls broken windows, old military blankets draped over the windows haphazardly. It is a dark scene so maybe some light outside thru the windows or door crack. Feeling should be very dark cinematic, HD, very detailed"
"Now the opposite view, looking into a partially destroyed kitchen, fridge knocked over dented, rusted, cabinet doors partially missing broken, broken dishes. Same exact aestehtic of the previous scne but looking into the home from the perspective of where we just created"

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

On Higgsfield go to create video.
- On references slick the + to add and then change tab to Elements. These are the consistent locations or characters you want.
- You'll want to create the background/environment for each shot and also each character. I had the 3 inside views like the below.

[Bubs (Darius Monsef) @bubs]

Making a short cinema quality story with @higgsfield_ai - I saw a moving short and wanted to try and create my own version and add a little to it. Couldn't find great instructions so here is the step by step way to recreating something like: