Matthew Wong

A stunningly broad coalition has come out against Skynet: AI researchers, faith leaders, business pioneers, policymakers, NatSec folks and actors stand together, from Bannon & Beck to Hinton, Wozniak & Prince Harry. We stand together because we want a human future. #KeepTheFutureHuman

@BallinFil You’re the 🐐

Wild to be sitting next to some of these goat marketers. If you want to buy 30 or 60 minutes of my time and AMA about all things Klaviyo, you can find me on MentorPass. Back to building 🧑‍💻

@BallinFil @getAkiflow but to be fair, sometimes just doing everything in notion is better so maybe time for me to cancel too :O

@BallinFil @getAkiflow i use Morgen and it links with notion which is nice

Sadly cancelling akiflow. I went from todomaxxing to just using a notion with "active tasks" A little bit of a gut punch to offer 50% off for life after being a customer for 1+ years - @getAkiflow this is a sweet offer but probably pissing off people who might have wanted to come back. I think something like 50% off for 3 months is better + same impact. Maybe a "if you decide to come back" offer too.

@BallinFil I can show u Fri. I’ve found it best to use the Claude desktop app (under the code tab) for my cofounder and I. There’s too much to learn with the terminal and the desktop app does the job if everything is setup. We also installed node for scripting.

Anyone had luck setting up claude code on PC? What's the best tutorial for it without feeling like I'm dismantling my computer.

@BallinFil Have you tried setting up Claude code for your employees with skills? It’s actually getting insane 🤯

We've reached a point with AI where you can re-interface anything. Just give claude code the API docs, what process you wish was easier (e.g. reviewing hiring applicant info in airtable faster), and a rough idea of how you want the interface to work, and poof. Now you have an interface that sits on top of your original database (excel/notion/airtable or whatever), but lets you go through your regular process faster. You can even tell it to layer AI onto specific steps for further layers of process improvement. This is where 10-20% productivity improvements come from.

@BallinFil i didn't know the image at the top was AI generated :O

The LP for my event looks like it was designed in 10 minutes. That's because it was. Could I make it super sexy and fancy? Yes. But then I'll attract the wrong people. It'll attract the people who want to go to a buttoned up event. The people who go to an event just so they can tell their boss they are "expanding their horizons". And the people who show up to events just to post about it on Linkedin. I want to attract the right people. The people who will read the copy and not get turned off by an AI generated image of Toronto. The people who will take a risk on an event that seems like a scam in the pursuit of learning. The people who are HUNGRY for DTC knowledge. Those are my people. And if those are your people too, this event is for you. There's 2 tickets left. We have some of the smartest brand operators & media buyers I've ever met attending. No agencies or sponsors. No pitching. Your move.

@BallinFil Amazing!! Thank you 🙏

Anything that inspires you to create new products & better ads. Hermozi Podcast for ops stuff The Adweek Copywriting Handbook for copy/understanding consumers Biographies or podcasts about creators that inspire you (Virgil Abloh, Dyson, Apple, etc. etc.) Maybe a hot take but I don't think traditional DTC podcasts really help anyone in that range scale...

Been listening to a lot of Hermozi recently. His info is great. Have given him $0. Know some people who have given him $50k+ for coaching. At first I wrote him off as guru (the mouthtape thing lmao). That was a mistake. It's a lot of the stuff we all kinda know, but it serves as a good ongoing reminder on how to be strategic with your operations. A lot of stuff I didn't know/realize too. Great. Not particularly helpful for ecom (but he has a few great videos worth watching). If I was a new guy starting out, I'd listen to 100+ hours of Hermozi and go and consult local service businesses stuck at 1-2mil. There's SO MANY businesses stuck in this place because of a bunch of limiting beliefs & silly operational decisions, and Hermozi breaks down most of it in his content for free. Not insane to help a business 50-100% grow with a few tweaks following his playbooks. Just food for thought.

I'm hosting a mini DTC conference on Feb 20th focused on organic/paid content. Our speaker lineup is stacked and will be revealing it in the next few days. If you want to scale your brand in 2026, meet a bunch of cool founders and spend a day in Toronto, hit me up. Only 50 seats available. No agencies. No SaaS. Just founders.

@humankind_place same

shopify down on cyber monday 😭😭😭

@yimingdothan You got this!

doing sales is so fucking hard man fuck

@humankind_place The warehouse move is 100% worth it. Running out of a basement hampers growth more than you know. If you believe in your biz it’s def worth the risk at least from my exp

I wanted to share something I learned last night. When you run a physical goods business you’re either 1. Building out your supply chain or 2. Selling. In order to scale your business and meet demand it often requires cash flow up front to fund supplies, rent etc. I didn’t expect this so soon but I am growing out of my old apartment and may have to take a bet moving to a warehouse, where rent will be $1500/mo and additional supplies will be probably around another $5-$7k. Right now my deal pipeline for retailers is relatively full, I have on the lower end $20k of unrealized gains and on the higher end $100-200k. Those gains are not realized right now, but I still have to make a decision on the warehouse and extra supplies. I basically have to predict the likelihood of the deals going through and estimate based on that. There’s actually no way to know the likelihood of closing a deal (at my stage, since I’m new to retail). All deals are not the same size either and do not all have the same upside. For example, spending $500 on supplies for with a 25% chance of closing a $1000 deal can be a bad decision. But spending $100k on a $200k deal with a 75% chance of happening is a better decision. The second deal feels worse because I’m shelling out a ton of cash but the odds are way better. I can still lose - and win - in both situations though. Those are the only two outcomes. I have to maximize the output of my supply chain at the right time to be able to meet the oncoming demand and by making good bets. The bets have to be overwhelmingly correct. Normally working with 51% odds or even 65% odds can be okay but at this scale one poor manufacturing decision can make me bleed. Anyways. Growing pains!

@BallinFil @klaviyo yoooo wtff @klaviyo get it together

Having an issue right now with a client where hosted pages on @klaviyo are out of gmail compliance. One click unsubscribe simply does not work. I've followed up with their team for weeks and have gotten nowhere. If anyone from Klaviyo sees this please flag - this is a huge deliverability vulnerability in the platform. Ticket: 2805477

@kennandavison icon

Introducing Icon, the world’s first AI CMO (Chief Marketing Officer): it can plan, create, & run 1000s of winning ads end-to-end. We're backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund & execs of frontier AI labs like OpenAI (ChatGPT), Cognition, & Pika. How it works: 1. Connect Icon to your Meta Ad Account & Google Drive. It’ll use your ad account data & existing assets for planning & making ads. 2. Icon finds 100 winning ad concepts daily. It does this by scanning websites (yours & competitors), competitor ads, customer reviews, ad account performance, & more. It comes up with 3 types of ads: "Competitor Clone," "New Concept," & "Winner Iteration." You can copy what worked for competitors, try fresh approaches, & scale your winners. 3. Icon turns winning concepts into ads better than ChatGPT. Say you’re trying to copy a competitor’s before-and-after style ad. ChatGPT would make up random before-and-after scenarios & get your product dimensions wrong. Icon has a reasoning layer on top of GPT-4o that deeply studies the ad for minutes. It understands that it needs to make before-and-after scenarios using real insights from your website, product descriptions, & reviews. Icon gets ad intent, while ChatGPT only sees pixels. 4. Launch ads into your ad accounts with 1 click for less than $1. Before Icon, you’d launch 10 ads per week. Now you can launch 1000 ads per week & get more winners. Everything in my life has led up to this. At 18, I had to support myself. I had to live with my parents to save money. And no one thought I’d go anywhere. I really hated this, so I worked 100-hour weeks until I destroyed coding interviews. Soon after, I dropped out to join Pinterest at 19. After being a minion at Pinterest, I quit cold turkey & started my 1st company Skio. I then fluked into Y Combinator as a solo founder & completely failed during the batch. Thankfully, pivoting worked well ($15M+ ARR & profitable). But it’s not over yet. I have a massive chip on my shoulder that I must fix with Icon. So far, so good: we went from $0 to $5M ARR in our first 30 days. I know I’m not supposed to say this publicly, but I want to make Icon the greatest company of all time. I want to deliver insane value to our customers. I want to create generational wealth for my team & investors. I want to break the $0 to $100M ARR world record. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is: I just bought icon.com for $12M. If you've read this far, I want to say thank you with a gift 👇 We have an internal Google Drive with 1000+ static winning ads & 1000+ winning video ads. These ads have driven >$1.3B revenue in the last 6 months. We trained AI CMO on these ads. I’m pretty sure the right person could make $100K+ by just copying them. Retweet this & comment “Icon” and I’ll send you the Google Drive link for free.

So excited to announce my new Protein Water brand, phuddle. What is phuddle? It’s water. With protein. And optimal pH. For your gains. For your soul. Dropping at a bodega near you, May 2025. Jump in the phuddle today.

@BallinFil Gonna get some gainz with phuddle!

@BallinFil i like it tho!

A message to young founders in dtc (you won’t like this). All of the brands I work with doing 7 or 8-figures a year spent 5-10 years getting there. I’ve seen very few brands that sustainably scaled their brand to 7-figures in <2 years, let alone 8. Most that hyper scale have big profit issues. Any agency, guru, influencer telling you it’s possible to hyperscale with 0 experience is taking advantage of you. Most of the true stories on here where brands do hyperscale, are usually the result of 1) an experienced founder 2) access to capital and 3) a unique distribution mechanism. Most new founders will have access to one of those 3, or none. Ecom is not easy. You need to love this shit. Be willing to pour years into it. Years where you fail a lot, and make little money. And eventually you’ll come out on the other side successful 🤙

@BallinFil Lmk when u find it

What's the best app for Shopify stores to analyze LTV & sub churn by UTM campaign/source/medium/etc.?

If you’re looking for an idea to work on. You’ll go far working with this guy