Stefan

building previously led @astroport_fi and founded rai/reflexer. i love risk

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

@antoniogm Should also mention that most "founders" gravitate toward SaaS and that's been the case for many years. It's both a problem of taste/direction and courage wrt building in consumer

[Paul Graham @paulg]

"What if the model companies do this?" is the new "What if Google does this?" I.e. the meaningless question investors ask that shows either that they're stupid or that they dislike you and are looking for ways to find fault.

[Jon Oringer @jonoringer]

@markpinc @MartinShkreli Not coachable is a compliment ..

[Hubert Thieblot @hthieblot]

The biggest pivot you can make as a founder is building something that finally makes you feel like yourself.

[Jack Altman @jaltma]

"If you are building the same thing other people build, it can only be similarly good. It can't be actually much better. It can slightly look nicer, but you're bounded a couple percentage points either direction. If you want to build something great or much better, it has to be different.

So this has to be your starting position."

[Olivia Moore @omooretweets]

So many people do not understand this - and it is core to consumer software👇

Gen Z and beyond does not care about data privacy as long as a product delivers for them

Bank accounts, contact book, email access, camera roll, etc. - they will gladly give it up

[Carlos De la Guardia @dela3499]

By itself, wealth inequality doesn’t cause violence or even the slightest ill will.

The poorest and richest at a tech hackathon, say, mingle easily despite their bank accounts being separated by many millions (and occasionally billions).

Perhaps because they share an interest in tech, and also rightly think that they *could* be rich, even if they aren’t right now. They aren’t separated by wealth, but united in a belief in the ability to create wealth and progress. It’s just that some are further along in that than others.

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

@hthieblot Poor Charlie's Almanack. Worth rereading every year.

[Adam Grenier @AKGrenier]

They're triggered because the product is shitty.

Nothing you said is inherently wrong @andrewchen .

It just conveniently leaves out the fact most performance marketing that's failing is a product problem or a board being too pushy to "find a new channel" because they don't have the guts to tell a founder the product kinda sucks.

I despise money going to paid advertising 90% of the time.

The majority is coming from companies WISHING their product was f'n awesome, rather than accepting they don't have a product worth marketing.

You can't buy PMF.

I know you and I agree with this in our bones.

The triggering you feel... is that every paid marketer worth their salt AGREES.

They hate spending hollow money.

Hate. It.

Yet despite bad product and misdirected board pressure, the narrative is that marketers just want more budget and what they do is a waste.

The reality: time and time again paid is a fundamental and necessary part of nearly every success story. Almost all of them.

So when you float the narrative without that including that context full throated, and Bill Gurley of all people gets on his high horse, what you're feeling is a visceral "F YOU" from those of us that got him and many others there.

In the most loving way, of course :)

Keep hitting your narrative Andrew. It's important, and you've stood behind it as long as I've known you.

My ask is that you hit the note harder that it's as important that founders focus on why they aren't growing without paid vs. just avoiding the strategy like the plague.

If helpful, here's a quote you can use:

"Or as my old pal AG says: your 'why the fuck would I pay for this' problem is a bit more pressing then your media budget."

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

@JesseRank it happened after musically proved demand 🤷‍♂️

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

people tend to confuse musically and tiktok. musically had strong pull in the beginning from a specific type of user. after they got acquired, bytedance cranked up the ads to ensure their dominance

it's obvious to any truly ambitious consumer founder that organic growth is the only way through. ads are fine after that for the exact scenario you described: generational impact

[nav @naveedg]

"IF YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING AND IT'S EASY, THEN IT'S NOT VALUABLE"

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

claude trips on additional_headers vs extra_headers and you're telling me it's AGI

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

@omooretweets grateful for your consumer reports. people gotta get out of the twitter/bay area bubbles and talk with users

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

a sign that you care about what you ship is that you delete more code than you generate

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

@alexkehr @varunram i assume the obvious fate was that dispo and bereal were mostly gimmicks. great for virality, but shaky foundations

clubhouse got traction cause people mostly wanna listen to other famous people, not to everyone else. plus, they caught a moment in time when everyone was indoors

[Steve the Beaver @beaversteever]

who will be responsible when the banking app your grandma generated *today* sends her money to the wrong account?

people want repeatability and shared experiences. they get annoyed when an app update moves the icons around.

you can't ask the average user to think of and request their own basic features.

[Stefan @dr__stoney]

@kr0der i stopped relying purely on prompts and instead combine them with jscpd, knip, a lot of custom linting rules and a bunch of other tools.

it took a few days but now I have a copy pasteable setup for most TS and Swift projects

[LaurieWired @lauriewired]

oh come on. You think your grandma wants to make her own app? Much less maintain it.

Everyone neglects the mental energy it takes to even *think* of what it is exactly you want.

The entire principle of apps relies on some faith that designers; and the collective feedback of their users, can come up with a workflow or design paradigm that is *better* than what you; an individual could come up with.

This is true for 99% of cases.

I’d be floored if even 1% of global users want bespoke applications for uber-specific needs. Not saying it’s useless; but it’s so far away from what average users want.

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

We’re so lucky we didn’t listen to all the people who told us to be SaaS—almost everyone "smart" btw