Startups

I Built an AI Website in 3 Hours. 562 People Signed Up. I’ve Never Felt More Lost.

Vanity metrics are the new opium of the entrepreneur. I built an AI website in 3 hours, got 562 sign-ups, and felt lost. The real danger of AI isn’t replacing developers—it’s creating a generation of zombie startups that solve no real problems. Learn why speed to market is useless without a foundational understanding of the problem you’re solving.

Stop Defending Local AI Models. They’ve Already Lost.

Local AI models won’t win; they’ll become an expensive hobby. The classic argument that PCs beat mainframes fails for AI because cloud APIs have compounding advantages: they improve faster, get cheaper, and absorb feedback loops that local hardware can’t match. If you build on local models for independence, you aren’t creating a moat—you’re taking a costly nostalgia trip.

SaaS Isn’t Dying — It Was Already Dead

Many SaaS companies survived on cheap debt, not real moats. With AI coding tools making in-house replication cheap and data sovereignty demands rising, the zombie era of subscription software is ending. The tools that survive will have genuine network effects or proprietary data — the rest will be replaced by internal builds. The question isn’t ‘Is SaaS dying?’ but ‘Did your SaaS ever have a reason to exist?’

‘Fake It Till You Make It’ Is Just a Euphemism for Criminal Fraud

Silicon Valley’s ‘fake it till you make it’ culture tolerates loose metric definitions, but fabricating millions of fake users crosses a material threshold into criminal fraud. The unsettling reality is that the entire ecosystem—investors, media, and partners—profits from not asking hard questions until a collapse makes denial impossible.

The CMO Shrugged at My CLV Model. And They Were Right.

Your CLV model is mathematically perfect, but the CMO shrugged. That’s not a failure of data—it’s a failure of strategy. The CMO is rationally protecting their budget and short-term incentives. To win adoption, you must frame your analysis as a tool that helps them win internal battles, not as a critique of their decisions.

AI Billboards Aren’t for You — They’re for VCs. And That’s the Problem.

San Francisco’s AI billboards aren’t just annoying—they’re a symptom of a venture-capital-driven marketing arms race. Each startup buys a billboard to signal to investors, but the collective result is a homogeneous blur that convinces nobody. The real problem isn’t the billboards; it’s the hype cycle that makes them seem necessary.

Stop Trying to Build a New Operating System. Here’s What Actually Works.

Every developer dreams of building an OS, but the reality is brutal: you can’t compete with free and good Linux, and hardware diversity crushes small teams. The real opportunity? Stop trying to build a general-purpose OS. Focus on a constrained environment—custom hardware, AI-native devices, or specialized appliances—where you control the full stack and legacy compatibility doesn’t matter. That’s where the next successful OS will emerge.