Steven Lien

Jesus ✞ | eCom | Investor | Alum @USC ✌🏻

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

A thread on wealth 💵 building no matter where you’re starting from:

Business and investments will typically yield you the highest probability for wealth. One or the other works, ideally both.

You want to generate both active income (you spend time generating)

[Naval @naval]

Is Traditional Software Engineering Dead?

“Does this mean that traditional software engineering is dead? Absolutely not. Software engineers—even the ones who are not necessarily tuning or training AI models—these are now among the most leveraged people on earth. Sure, the guys who are training and tuning models are even more leveraged because they’re building the tool set that software engineers are using.

But software engineers still have two massive advantages on you. First, they think in code, so they actually know what’s going on underneath. And all abstractions are leaky. So when you have a computer programming for you—when you have Claude Code or equivalent programming for you—it’s going to make mistakes.

It’s going to have bugs. It’s going to have suboptimal architecture. So it’s not going to be quite right. And someone who understands what’s going on underneath will be able to plug the leaks as they occur.

So if you want to build a well-architected application, if you want to be able to even specify a well-architected application, if you want to be able to make it run at high performance, if you want it to do its best, if you want to catch the bugs early, then you’re going to want to have a software engineering background.

The traditional software engineer is going to be able to use these tools much better. And there are still many kinds of problems in software engineering that are out of scope for these AI programs today. The easiest way to think about those is problems that are outside of their data distribution.

For example, if they need to do a binary sort or reverse a linked list, they’ve seen countless examples of that, so they’re extremely good at it. But when you start getting out of their domain—where you have to write very high-performance code, when you’re running on architectures that are novel or brand new, when you’re actually creating new things or solving new problems, then you still need to get in there and hand code it.

At least until either there are so many of those examples that new models can be trained on them, or until these models can sufficiently reason at even higher levels of abstraction and crack it on their own…

And remember: there is no demand for average. The average app—nobody wants it, at least as long as it’s not filling some niche that is filled by a superior app. The app that is better will win essentially a hundred percent of the market. Maybe there’s some small percentage that will bleed off to the second-best app because it does some little niche feature better than the main app, or it’s cheaper, or something of the sort.

But generally speaking, people only want the best of anything. So the bad news is there’s no point in being number two or number three—like in the famous Glengarry Glen Ross scene where Alec Baldwin says, “First place gets a Cadillac Eldorado, second place gets a set of steak knives, and third place you’re fired.”

That’s absolutely true in these winner-take-all markets. That’s the bad news: You have to be the best at something if you want to win.

However, the set of things you can be best at is infinite. You can always find some niche that is perfect for you, and you can be the best at that thing. This goes back to an old tweet of mine where I said, “Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.”

And I think that still applies in this age of AI.”

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@wearetheselect Roadmap

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@DisrupterSchool FREE

[Dylan O'Sullivan @DylanoA4]

Seneca on reading, goddamn

[Preston Rutherford @PrestonRuther10]

Chubbies was acquired for 9 figures and went through a 10 figure IPO - your classic overnight success that took a decade. As a brand builder, the stat that completely changed my approach to brand building was the 95/5 rule.

btw, I basically did the exact opposite of what the rule says for embarrassingly too long, but hey, my loss is your gain, so here's:

1) Three things I learned about the 95/5 rule,
2) Three ways you can update your thinking on the topic, and
3) Three things you can do about this right now.

let's do it.

** Three things I learned about the 95/5 rule **

1. Only 5% of the people who see your content on a daily basis (AKA your potential buyers) are in-market to buy right now. That means 95% of the buyers you reach are out-of-market and won’t buy for months or even years.

2. And, nope, no matter how awesome your direct response offer is, you cannot persuade the buyer to go in-market because they already have what you’re selling and won’t need a newer version any time soon. We don’t move buyers in-market – buyers move themselves in-market based on their needs.

3. All the direct-response conversion-focused dollars we spend are only relevant to the 5% of folks. This was especially humbling when realizing that ~95% of our spend allocation went to direct response (see reference above re: doing the exact opposite).

** Three ways you can update your thinking on the topic **

1. Our goal is to increase the probability that the brand comes to mind when the buyer goes in-market, NOT to persuade the buyer to go in market. You can’t push buyers down a funnel, but you can, to quote Professor Jenni Romaniuk, “catch buyers as they fall”.

2. "People largely use their memories when buying, rather than searching. Simply put, the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought." - John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

3. Since marketing works by influencing future buyers, think about developing creative that gets noticed and gets remembered -- gives you permission to be bold, put on a show and have a little fun.

** Three things you can do about it right now **

1. Since we've all been so focused on optimizing the hell out of how we convert the 5%, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the 95%. Walk a day in the shoes of the 95% to develop the empathy needed to effectively speak to that person.

2. Put together a plan to gradually shift your marketing investments to match the reality of the 95/5 rule. It could take all of 2024. No need to rush.

3. Take a day with your team. Remove all meetings. From a blank slate, think about what it means to do things that get remembered, that get noticed. What does it mean for your brand to be bold, to put on a show, and to have a little bit of fun?

enjoy

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@seanfrank @Evan_Swanson_ Great advice. Not gonna lie, had to use ChatGPT to interpret what you said lol.

I was just about to get inventory funding for 200k but working with a small local bank and working up isn’t something I thought of. Thanks!

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

Starting to just post to get used to it. Trying to be authentic rather than preachy. Not easy trying to just speak your mind rather than make it sound smart.

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

I wish I spent more time earlier on in life figuring out what I had a competitive advantage in and sticking with it. Knowledge and expertise compound and builds a moat.

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

Building anything is pretty hard. The temptation to quit and start something new when the going gets tough is a constant hum in the background. Fighting that urge is part of the battle.

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@obviceo @KodyNordquist Can I get the breakdown too 🙏🏻

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

💯😀

[Jonathan Swanson @swaaanson]

Elon runs six multi billion-dollar companies simultaneously (SpaceX, Tesla, X, xAI, Neuralink, and Boring Company)

Most founders can’t run one.

Walter Isaacson (who spent a year shadowing Elon and wrote his biography) explains ‘How Elon does it’ on a podcast

Thread 🧵

[Ben Lang @benln]

Paul Graham one-pager on how to start a startup:

[Brett Adcock @adcock_brett]

These lessons came from my experience building Archer ($2.7B IPO) and Vettery ($100M exit).

Follow me @adcock_brett for more.

Like/Retweet the first tweet below if you can:

[Max Hertan @maxhertan]

Bryan Johnson sold his company to PayPal for $800 million in 2013.

Since then, he's been investing millions to reduce aging.

In 2021, he reduced his epigenetic age by 5.1 years in 7 months (World Record)

Here’s a breakdown of his “Blueprint” and my own experience with it: 🧵

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@Curvance unwage.eth

[Naval @naval]

When building a portfolio of investments that can have non-linear outcomes, never sell early.

You may be right most of the time, but the one time you’re wrong will cost you most of the returns.

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@SnowbankDAO 👎🏻

[0xZoey @0xZoey]

1/ The Evolution of DeFi Liquidity Infrastructure: a long 🧵...

[Steven Lien @steven_lien_]

@SnowdogDAO Trash