Everyone has their favourite routine to perform at their best.
Some are advocates for the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes of intensive work, with a 5-minute short break), others love time-blocking, a few plan the entire week on Sunday, and there are even people who say ice-cold showers la Wim Hof help them focus.
As a graphic designer, I look at products from two angles: how they look, and whether they make me understand why they exist before I lose patience.
A beautiful hero image catches attention. But that alone has never convinced me to stay.
Going through 50+ landing pages recently, I noticed a pattern in the ones that actually earned my trust:
The ones that worked answered "what does this do?" before I scrolled. Not with a tagline, but with a plain sentence a non-technical person could repeat. The value prop wasn't clever. It named a problem I already felt, not a feature I had to imagine needing. The next step didn't feel like a commitment. One page I almost left had a single button that said "See how it works", no email required. I stayed.
Tons of great products that we know and use everyday are the result of pivots. You know, sometimes the original idea just isn't working and you have to find a new niche and quick, other times you stumble on a use case that changes the whole game.
Have you ever pivoted? What's the story behind it? How successful was the pivot? I'd love to hear your stories, and potentially feature them in our newsletters!
We finally decided to dip our toes into paid acquisition last month. We had $2,000 saved up specifically for a marketing test. I spent a week tweaking the Meta Ads manager, designing creatives, and writing copy.
When the campaign ended, the dashboard looked incredible. We got 400 new signups for our free tier at a Cost Per Lead (CPL) of just $5. I was doing the math in my head, thinking, "If even 10% of these convert to our $29/month plan, we're golden."
Reality hit hard this week.
Of the 400 signups, 280 never even logged in after creating an account.
Another 100 logged in once, clicked around for two minutes, and never returned.
Out of the 20 people who actually connected their data and used the product, exactly 2 upgraded to a paid plan.
https://futureoflife.org/open-le... Top artificial intelligence researchers, the co-founder of Apple, and Elon Musk are among signatories of an open letter calling for companies to stop training powerful AIs. They argue that advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and companies should not be racing to unleash it. The letter calls for a six-month pause, providing time to decide whether developing things that might outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us is a good idea. Meanwhile, a Goldman Sachs report suggested that generative AIs like GPT-4, the most advanced platform so far debuted, could automate away the equivalent of 300 million jobs, especially in legal and administrative work.
I've used ChatGPT and other AI tools while building my startup, and they've made it possible to take on work that would normally require a much larger team. Research, technical problem-solving, planning, and exploring new ideas can happen much faster. But one thing I've learned is that completing more work doesn't necessarily mean the business is moving forward at the same speed. You can build faster, solve technical problems faster, and make improvements faster, while the harder questions about customers, adoption, and business growth still take time to answer. It's changed how I think about productivity as a founder. I'm learning to distinguish between how much work gets completed and whether that work is actually moving the business forward.
For founders building with AI, what's one lesson you've learned about the difference between moving faster and making real business progress?
We ve worked in two other eco-systems (India & France), and each has clear strengths and trade-offs in terms of talent density, cost of building, access to capital, speed of decision-making, and openness to risk all vary a lot.
Curious to hear from founders and operators who ve built outside the US:
Which ecosystem punches the most above its weight today?
Where do you see the best balance between talent, capital, and customer access?
Are there cities/countries that are especially strong for specific stages (0 1 vs scaling) or specific verticals (AI, fintech, climate, SaaS, deep tech)?
