While building a product, I ve also been trying to run content on social media to bring in more traffic. I experimented with creating AI-generated characters and producing UGC-style videos around them.
During this process, I realized something interesting: there are hundreds of tools that can generate virtual characters and UGC-style videos. But what actually makes a video engaging isn t the tool - it s the authenticity of the person creating the content.
Early-stage founders often try to improve their product as much as possible and tend to take almost any feedback into account.
Sometimes they end up adding every feature users (even non-paying ones) ask for, even when those features are unnecessary. The product then becomes more complicated and harder to use.
And I m not even talking about the stage when the product is already established. At that point, there are more users, and their expectations start to differ.
Hey, friends! We've posted 5 new problems. Especially check out problem #4 (first I laughed, then I thought about it, and then I posted it ). 1. Nigeria's transport trap: Uber/Bolt too expensive, okada too deadly, Danfo buses a nightmare. Millions need safe, affordable carpooling. Ready to pay.
2. Photographer loses 20 30% of clients to spam needs an AI clone with a copy of her voice to answer calls and book sessions. 3. Voice control for AI coding breaks when I change my mind mid-sentence. Need an AI intermediary that cleans up prompts through conversation before sending.
4. Need a smart device that automatically detects pigeons and permanently deters them. Everything on the market only works temporarily.
Today, I read a TechCrunch article about what investors are no longer looking for in SaaS, or rather, what to avoid if you don't want to lose their interest.
The red flags were:
Too easy to replicate light AI wrappers, generic horizontal tools, basic CRM clones, generic productivity or project management tools.
No real depth products where differentiation is mostly UI and automation, anything without proprietary data, surface-level analytics.
Becoming obsolete workflow automation tools that coordinate human work (agents are taking over), integrations as a moat (MCP is making connectors a commodity), and "workflow stickiness" products trying to keep humans inside their software.
TL;DR: Anthropic refused to sign a contract with the Pentagon that would have allowed the U.S. military to use all of its models without restrictions. Anthropic insisted on an exception, and brace yourself, that its models cannot be used: 1) for mass surveillance of citizens, 2) for autonomous killing. Now the administration is threatening that if the founder of Anthropic doesn't change his mind by a certain date, they will come after him.
Google, OpenAI, and Musk (Grok) have all signed the contract.
Following Sam Altman's announcement over the past few hours, people have been speaking out massively about cancelling their OpenAI subscriptions and subscribing to Claude.
Before AI, I always thought I would NEVER learn how to code. I genuinely admired technical people, watching them code felt like watching magic. I remember wishing that maybe one day, I could do something like that too.
I ve never had any formal education in programming, and I had zero experience building apps. But with AI, I was able to start from just an idea and slowly figure things out on my own experimenting, setting things up, and eventually creating my first interface that I could actually interact with.
It honestly felt magical. It made me realize how fast the world is changing. Coding is no longer something completely out of reach. AI is making it possible for people like me to turn ideas in our heads into real, tangible drafts for the first time.
When mass layoffs started in tech, many people suggested that:
The layoffs were happening because, during COVID, companies hired too many people for online and remote roles.
That AI was attacking jobs.
And I still keep seeing statements from creators of various AI tools saying: No, AI won t replace you. Employees will just have time for more meaningful tasks in a company.
Today, I m doing a slightly more relaxed and bizarre corner.
The internet is full of things that are either amusing or scary, but mostly things that capture something outside the norm (and over time, even these weird things tend to become normalised).
There s a unique joy in building physical products, and winning recognition from the industrial design community is definitely a very important part of that.
I m really honored that @Flowtica Scribe has received the 2026 iF Design Award it feels like the design world is validating exactly why we do this.
but I recently came across an article describing how someone used Claude Code to access robot vacuum devices across 24 countries and potentially observe their environments.
There has always been a framework for pricing that considers: Costs Competitor pricing Typical price ranges in the country What the client or company can afford to pay (meaning their business size) Your personal brand and authority
The more people ask for my services and want to claim my time, the higher I need to set my price (not surprisingly, I then often get ghosted).
On Feb 24, 2026, Anthropic said it uncovered industrial-scale efforts by Chinese Labs (@DeepSeek, Moonshot and @MiniMax-M2.5) to extract capabilities from its Claude models via distillation.
According to Anthropic, the campaigns involved:
16M+ exchanges
~24,000 fraudulent accounts
Proxy networks to bypass regional restrictions
Targeted extraction of reasoning, coding and tool-use abilities
I posted a random thread on X about the cost of living in the Netherlands. Nothing about what we're building. Just genuine thoughts about life in the Netherlands.
It hit 1M+ impressions. And here's the weird part we got a ton of signups and paid users for Starnus from it. Without ever mentioning the product.
Meanwhile, my "here's what Starnus does" posts? Way less engagement.
This genuinely messed with my head. I'm sharing the actual X post below
When I first started, I believed that as long as I built a great product, it would naturally become popular. But as I zoomed out, I realized the market is incredibly competitive. Having a good product alone isn t enough to truly convince users.
That s when I began building my presence on social media creating content about myself, sharing my journey, and talking about the product I m building. I ve come to see this as a very effective way to build trust and spark genuine interest not only in what I make, but also in who I am as a founder.
At the beginning of the year, 2 co-founders reached out to me because they wanted to scale their personal LinkedIn profiles. The reason: In a few months, they re planning to raise funding and believe their personal brand could help.
A few days ago, another founder contacted me with a similar intention, although he s not planning to raise funding. For him, LinkedIn has become the platform that generates the most leads. He doesn t particularly enjoy the network itself, but he still wants to keep building it.
hey ph community, spent a good amount of time putting this one together and i think it's worth a read if you're into learning, productivity, or just curious about how memory actually works.
most people try to learn vocabulary, feel like nothing is sticking after a week, and quit. what they don't realize is that the real changes in your brain happen much later. and if you quit before week 3, you're leaving before the interesting part even starts.
I m increasingly noticing a trend: people use AI for (almost everything), especially for writing texts. it is nothing new, but it started to be annoying (?)
The problem is that AI often: fully or largely replicates existing text without adding anything new adds completely pointless things, like a two-line comment followed by writes extremely long comments that no one will actually read
