Maire ♡ EconExpert

I am finding startups, apps, or businesses worth examining, then give you the full picture: what they got right, where they slipped, and what I'd change if they were mine. Instead of wasting months to basically make mistakes that will cost you time and money, join me in this ride where I post about : “What I’d Fix” → 1 win, 1 flaw, 1 improvement in startups and businesses breakdowns of what works vs what doesn’t practical ideas founders could apply.

@lulumeservey rethink productivity, rethink banking, rethink insurance, rethink telling me what your product actually does

Your landing page is not your problem. Your retention is. Anyone can get signups with the right ad spend. The question is what percentage of those users come back on day 7.

@sama is this the same person that said "we want ai to become utility that people pay for, and as important to humans as electricity and water"

we want to build tools to augment and elevate people, not entities to replace them.

@BoringBiz_ pessimism gets the likes because it sounds sophisticated, optimism gets the returns because someone actually had to build the thing being criticised

Being a pessimist sounds really smart until you realize that the world is completely owned and operated by optimists No one has been able to compound wealth over a long enough time period by being a pessimist Look at the Forbes richest list and you will only find absolute optimists there

@LaddersHQ @Markmanson exactly

@EconExpt @Markmanson Busy isn't the same as needed

If you want people to value your time, stop giving it away so easily.

@blakeaburge the gap between who you are and who you planned to be by now is almost entirely made of postponed starts

The older I get, the more I realize how dangerous it is to keep pushing things off. You tell yourself you’ll start next week, next month, next year. Then suddenly a lot of time has passed and nothing has changed. An entire life can be built (or pass you by) in tiny moments.

Pricing is a product decision, not a sales decision. What you charge tells users what category you are in. A $5/month tool feels like a utility. A $50/month tool feels like a serious workflow investment. Same product. Different buyer psychology.

@Waller7J the people who can't manage their own household finances running a business is one of the more reliable predictors of how that business ends

Running a business and running a household operate on the same principles. Discipline, accountability, and knowing when to lead and when to listen. Get one right and the other gets easier.

@danmartell comfortable content gets polite engagement, content that makes someone feel seen or exposed gets shared

If your audience doesn’t feel called out, they won’t lean in.

The gap between “I built this in a weekend with AI” and “people actually use this every day” is still massive. Shipping code is easy now. Shipping trust, reliability, UX, and retention is the hard part. That’s where the real moat is.

@Austen Exactly, AI lowered the cost of starting, not the cost of caring. Anyone can generate features now fewer can build something polished enough that users come back

Yes, the gap between vibe coded slop and something that is well-built and people want to use is still really big. AND You can solve for that, and you should still build with AI.

Builders and founders, a total ad stack rebuild isn't just a UI update, it’s a shift in the underlying physics of how you find customers. Will write more on how asap

@thedankoe everyone who came back from a real extended break always seem to be working on something better than whatever they left, the output that comes after silence is worth it

Normalize disappearing for an extended period of time to do a factory reset on your focus and creativity.

@mark__odera @stevenaranjo1 @Austen will take a look for sure

@stevenaranjo1 @EconExpt @Austen Same moment a lot of devs hit. We built HVT out of that frustration self-hostable, open-source, no MAU taxes. Worth a look: hvts.app

What is the SAAS companies are least likely to build internally? Honestly it's probably video conferencing (Zoom, Google Meet), CRM (Salesforce/Hubspot) and messaging (Google Workspace/Slack). Anything else I'm missing?

@adamsilverman @perplexity_ai there isn't anything to compete with perplexity in the slightest for now, they're too powerful when it comes to their ai browser, if anyone wants to catch up they have to go a long way

Anyone else using @perplexity_ai comet as their daily browser? I haven’t been able to find anything as powerful. It is by far the best browser agent on the market.

@hnshah your whole launch should be based on whether you did it or not and its results

User research and testing should never be an afterthought.

@thedankoe exactly what I thought today x.com/EconExpt/statu…

Most people quit because they forget that you have to be bad at something before you can be good at it. It's so obvious. You suck. Of course you're not going to win in 2 weeks. But if you can learn to enjoy extended periods of failure, you will make it very, very far in life.

real founders don't depend on luck btw, it's trial and error until it works.