Brian

Some random thoughts 😶‍🌫️

[Tibo @tibo_maker]

higher price = lower churn

sounds wrong but let me explain

we launched Tweet Hunter at $9/month then raised prices, slowly

$9 -> $19 -> $29 -> $39 -> $49 over roughly 12 months

price went up 400%, and churn went DOWN

here's what I have learned about pricing and churn from that:

1. churn is decided at signup, not at cancellation

your pricing is a psychological filter on who comes in

a bad-fit customer will leave in a month or two max. with low prices they come in fast

because $9 says "it's someone's weekend project"

and $49 says "it's a serious business built for serious operators"

2. the buyer changes with price, so the behaviour changes

often if a $9/month user does not see value, they cancel right away

(at this price, users generally come in to try or buy on impulse)

but a $49/month user comes in with a goal and they usually try harder to get the value from it

and if they have issues, they raise support tickets that make the product better

what cheap pricing actually costs you:

3. cheap customers are the most expensive ones

low prices don't just bring in users who leave fast, they bring in the most demanding people you'll ever serve

more unreasonable feature requests, more support tickets, more refunds, and less revenue to cover any of it. I still do support on all 6 products, so I feel this one directly

4. your pricing decides what kind of users you let in, and that changes what YOU build

low prices quietly cap what direction you take your product in

how to actually raise prices:

5. raise slowly and ship while you raise

$9 to $49 overnight is a completely different move than $9 to $49 across a year of shipping

we shipped a lot on Tweet Hunter in those 12 months and I could see the difference in who was signing up

6. do not change the price for old users

because for an old user, leaving means losing a rate they can never get back

strongest retention lever I know

that's lock-in though, not fit. split your churn by old price and new price if you want to know which one you actually got

7. when "too expensive" shows up as the reason for cancellation, that's usually not about price

it's the polite version of "I stopped seeing value"

if your product adds value to your users at a justified price, they will rarely complain about price

and if they do, either your product isn't delivering value or they aren't the right user

8. past a certain price you leave impulse territory and enter budget review

the Outrank agency plan is at $1,499. at that price nobody forgets they're paying you

it gets looked at every month, on purpose, as an active expense

see, all of this is true, but none of it will work if your product doesn't deliver the value you promise

a high price on a weak product will just get you a lot of refund requests, nothing else

it has played out similarly across all of my SaaS:

- Revid: acquired as Typeframes, one-off videos, ~30% churn. rebuilt it as a real subscription at a real price. $00k+/month today

- Outrank: $99/month, premium instead of cheap. LTV up 33%, churn down ~20%. $120k mrr last August -> $300k+ today

- SuperX: told people last September to lock in $29 before it moved. it's at $49 now

so do this today:

pull up your cheapest cohort and your most expensive cohort

compare retention, engagement, support tickets and even user type

you already know what you'll find

[reira @reiraxbt]

Andrej Karpathy spent 8 years at OpenAI and Tesla

Last week, he put everything he knows into one free 2-hour lecture

People pay $15k for bootcamps that teach half of this

You probably don't have 2 hours right now

Don't let this get lost in your feed

Watch it, then read the guide below and build your first loop

[Jake Castillo @jakecastilloooo]

2.5 years of app scaling, distribution, and marketing sauce in 2 mins (Part 1):

(BOOKMARK THIS)

1. When you evaluate a niche to build an app in, look for these 4 factors to predict your upside:

[George Lampropoulos @GeorgeLampro20]

I've spent the last month compiling everything I know about apps that took me from $0 to $50k a month. This is the Growth Playbook. https://t.co/IwoIHPJ4NI

[Alex Nguyen @alexcooldev]

https://t.co/PPy1ZzSwPA

[Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman]

Elon Musk turns 55 today.

Here are 55 milestones.

Age 54: world's first trillionaire
Age 54: takes SpaceX public
Age 54: SpaceX acquires xAI
Age 54: releases Grok 4
Age 53: launches Robotaxi service
Age 53: xAI acquires X
Age 53: catches Starship booster
Age 53: unveils Cybercab
Age 53: first private spacewalk
Age 53: Colossus supercomputer
Age 52: first Neuralink implant
Age 52: launches Grok
Age 52: rebrands Twitter as X
Age 52: founds xAI 
Age 51: launches first Starship
Age 51: buys Twitter
Age 50: flies first all-civilian crew
Age 50: unveils Optimus robot
Age 49: wins NASA moon contract
Age 48: launches crew to orbit
Age 48: ships Tesla Model Y
Age 48: unveils Cybertruck
Age 48: launches Tesla Megapack
Age 47: first Starlink satellites
Age 46: launches Falcon Heavy 
Age 46: unveils Tesla Semi 
Age 45: starts Boring Company 
Age 45: opens first Gigafactory 
Age 45: founds Neuralink 
Age 45: unveils Solar Roof 
Age 45: reflies Falcon 9 
Age 44: reveals Tesla Model 3 
Age 44: lands a rocket booster
Age 44: co-founds OpenAI 
Age 44: ships Tesla Model X 
Age 43: unveils Powerwall 
Age 43: launches Tesla Autopilot 
Age 41: opens first Superchargers 
Age 40: ships Tesla Model S 
Age 40: Dragon reaches ISS 
Age 39: Dragon reaches orbit 
Age 39: takes Tesla public (IPO) 
Age 38: Falcon 9 first flight 
Age 37: Falcon 1 reaches orbit 
Age 36: ships first Tesla Roadster 
Age 35: co-founds SolarCity 
Age 32: co-founds Tesla 
Age 31: sells PayPal to eBay 
Age 30: founds SpaceX 
Age 30: takes PayPal public 
Age 27: founds X dot com
Age 27: sells Zip2 to Compaq 
Age 24: co-founds Zip2 
Age 19: sells PCs in dorm
Age 12: codes video game Blastar

[Brian @menetmanus]

@businessbarista 🤣

[Marc Lou @marclou]

I documented my SaaS journey to $20K MRR.

It took 512 days.

I got excited, I cried, I laughed, I lost hope. I got literally every moment on camera.

This video is the raw story of what building a startup actually feels like.

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

Elon Musk doing Elon Musk things in Beijing 😂

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

On my way to Beijing in Air Force One

[Brian @menetmanus]

@mattiapomelli Which tech stack are u using ?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

I don’t even smoke lol 💨

[Brian @menetmanus]

@elonmusk many emotions

[Brian @menetmanus]

@naval Yes

[Brian @menetmanus]

@awnihannun @grok, could you explain this simply for me?

[Brian @menetmanus]

@feelzyou Hello, let' connect

[Brian @menetmanus]

@hyhieu226 @OpenAI @xai Wish all best for u

[Alex Xu @alexxubyte]

Block recently laid off 40% of its workforce.

I am truly sorry to everyone going through this. We want to provide a bit of support during this difficult time. We would like to offer one year of free access to our interview prep platform. Losing a job is incredibly stressful, and we hope this can ease at least one small part of the process.

Our platform covers system design, coding patterns, ML system design, OOD, and more.

There are no strings attached.

Just email me at [email protected] with your name and a brief note, and we will get you set up.

[Brian @menetmanus]

@ThinkDi92468945 @aadarshhx8 @marclou @steipete funny thing Peter still replies ;)

[Brian @menetmanus]

This is where 'vibe coding' come frome

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.