Saul Brauns

end wasted human potential | rice ai

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

replacing phones...

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

1st place ain't too bad 🥱
(Antler x Obvious Hackathon)

$20,000 in credits is a pretty nice prize.

Churned through 13 billion tokens to build a chemical process simulation tool, modeling 170+ thermodynamic models and 400+ equipment types. Go be great.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

Base Power raised $2.5b in 3 years.
Base Power was also founded 3 years ago.

They partnered with AITX Community to run a hackathon this past weekend. And because they install home battery systems, we built software on Meta glasses with 3D spatial reasoning to walk an apprentice electrician through the install.

If an apprentice misses a step, we wire the footage into Base's Quality Control Team to review, and then update the apprentice's personalized data corpus, so the glasses instruct them to not make the same mistake in the future.

Other blue-collar trades work similarly: you watch an expert do it right, and then try to do it yourself, over and over and over again. But we're not going to compete with China this way. We need more skilled blue-collar workers to build out the infrastructure our grid requires, and the rate at which we can train them is a key bottleneck.

So it may have cost us some sleep to build this project... and some... many cortisol spikes... but I'm very proud of this build.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

AI will create jobs in the long-term.

This campaign is clickbait.

We've seen it in every previous tech revolution:

1) Routine and dangerous work fades.
2) Workers shift from manual work to machine maintenance or critical thinking.
3) More skilled workers demand higher pay.

History doesn't repeat itself, but human nature does. AI might be new, but its effect on society has historical precedent.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

Build your dream company in 1 day.
Go broke in 2.

I'm all for quitting your job.
I'm all for starting companies.

But "Build your dream company in 1 day" is AI propaganda... building a great company takes years.

YEARS.

It doesn't matter that you can build faster with AI. Product development is no longer the bottleneck. Adoption is.

Only 2% of US households pay for an AI subscription. Even with a great product, you're still capped by how fast people are willing to change.

So let's all get this through our heads...
A great company takes years to build.

Now get to work.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

If you like startups...
How could you not know Joseph Ayinde?

Some founders are frauds: only a small sliver of the entrepreneurial community would actually die before giving up.

Even the ones who dropped out are half thinking about selling so they can go back to school. Their heart isn't in it.

Joseph is not one of those people. This guy is a dawg.

I just sold my Palantir shares to buy up The Learning and Memory Lab merch. Diamond hands. Holding 3 years till he's at unicorn status and then flipping this stuff.

Never bet against a founder with real hunger.
My gut doesn't lie. I'm all in.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

Every young founder has a dead philosopher they won't shut up about.

We're all turning into wannabe Francis Pedraza.

If you don't know him: he built Invisible into a billion-dollar company, and now he funds the translation of six million pages of Sanskrit and Tibetan text out of the ruins of Nalanda.

He's inspired a new wave of founders + philosophers who love:
- Fredrick Nietzsche
- Naval Ravikant
- David Goggins

And shout out to Max Weinstein for having me on the podcast. We'll shoot another episode years from now where I explain how everything I said I'd do came true.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

I read 40 books on startups and learned nothing.

I used to read book after book on startups. Every time someone recommended something, I'd tack it onto an ever-regenerating list of media to consume. I got nowhere, and I learned nothing.

Because learning is not reading a book, listening to a podcast, or sitting in class. Learning is when you digest information and then implement it.

If a professor teaches you that price is a signal, you haven't learned anything until you price your product too low and watch people scoff at you.

And here's the real danger of reading: too many inputs paralyze you. Advice conflicts from one source to the next, and you can't tell what to listen to because you've never acted on any of it.

So I stole a rule from @AlexHormozi : after you consume a piece of media, do everything it said before consuming another.

This is how you learn: by doing.

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

$100M in his 20s

@sideshift_app is the world's biggest ugc creator marketplace

the guy behind me is @nicholasnlawton one of the cofounders

key takeaway from their journey is just talk to ur customers

its a boring answer that everyone says but seriously just obsess over what ur customers want and youll probably do pretty well

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

the tools for gtm in 2026

scraping:
serper + https://t.co/e6j9IZKSGf ($35)

signals:
f5bot + trigify + whatruns + visualping ($54)

outreach:
origami ($30)

that's only $119/month

superconnector or happenstance for warm leads if u want. go get urself some clients

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

your group chat is dead bc everyone muted it
we made an app to fix that

jk we didnt

but @omarontape did
its called @officialvlogit

50k waitlist, now live on the app store
coolest social app ive seen

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

ran into @TylerStrothman at a random cafe in sf

senior year of college he slept on a chinese factory floor

wanted to be close to the product

dude makes the greatest shoes on earth

veloci to the moon

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

pulled up to series hq

they raised a couple mil
run a startup community in nyc

went and met some absolutely insane people

unreal trip

you are who you surround yourself with

surround yourself with maniacs

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

banana bikini and soft serve on a sidewalk sign

its provocative marketing

but it got me to stop

then i passed three more of these signs at three more matchaful locations

its clearly working

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

high school...

I'm 19 and it already feels like forever ago

time flies

so i try to live like ill have to live this exact life again

over and over and over and over

if u knew what ur doing youd have to do again

would u do it

onwards,
@saulbrauns

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

i made a coinbase account today

wiring ethereum to pakistan

dont ask

anything for more runway

onwards,
@saulbrauns

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

stealing is winning

barebells straight up lifted toblerones branding

gold packaging
red script logo
same premium look

i bought four bars

stop priding yourself on originality
start selling

go be great
never settle

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

you guys know about berserk or no

it's basically a startup

a ton of sacrifice
a ton of obsession
straight up unhinged at times

highly recommend

[Saul Brauns @saulbrauns]

13 calls straight starting at 6 am

then had some secret work to do 🤫

now its 11 pm and im waiting for an uber to drive me 3 hrs north

i need to deliver a message to a ceo

the mission is always the same
end wasted human potential