Len Markidan

excited for the cease and desist letters to come in

@kylefox @levelsio @StevieZollo Seconded, Fidgie is great.

@levelsio @StevieZollo Check out fidgie.com — it does this, but generates the stories as soothing audiobooks on iOS/Android.

✨ To prove my friend @StevieZollo (who's visiting me in Brazil) you don't need an idea, or even a lot of time these days to ship a little app that might make money I took the top idea from IdeasAI.com: "A startup that uses AI to generate personalized bedtime stories for kids based on their interests, family photos, and daily activities, delivered via a voice app. (❤️ 110 likes, 3 days ago)" So I copy pasted it into Claude Code and asked it to build it The first version of course didn't work, and I had to tell it some endpoints didn't work properly but then it fixed it The bedtime stories are generated by @xAI Grok 4.1, then sent to TTS with @GoogleAI Gemini and payment with @Stripe Checkout Total time from start to live: 24 minutes

My sister has pancreatic cancer. She’s fighting like hell but it’s… a lot. She’s used up all her sick days with several days of treatments and procedures ahead. The school she teaches at launched a fundraiser to help and I want to share it for reach. gofundme.com/f/support-rhon…

@cameronmattis Herb sounds like a true mensch. Sorry for your loss, and may his memory be a blessing.

[2/2] At different times he served as WTA President, Vice President, Membership Chair, and Treasurer, but perhaps the role he enjoyed most was that of Trails Chair, in which he trained and oversaw the group's volunteer trail maintainers. Herb also served as Treasurer for the NY-NJTC, and helped to field-test the hikes in the organization's book Walkable Westchester. In recognition of his years of distinguished service, the WTA named him a Life Member and the NY-NJTC awarded him the 2013 Ken Lloyd Award. Over the course of several years Herb hiked about five hundred miles of the Appalachian trail with his friend Peter Hibbard, and traveled to hike in destinations as diverse as the Dolomites and Morocco's Atlas Mountain. He was also an avid runner, cross-country skier, and kayaker. His favorite place on Earth was the Grand Canyon. Herb was happiest when he combined his passions for family and the outdoors. When one of his daughters moved to New Mexico, he joined the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club so that he could plan family visits to coincide with noteworthy hikes. Later, he and Audrey joined their grandchildren and adult children in a series of multi-day whitewater rafting trips that remain treasured memories. When his oldest granddaughter became engaged in 2011, he introduced her fiancé's family to his own during a spectacular twelve-day, four-generation, multi-family hiking trip to Switzerland's Bernese Oberland. In 1977 Herb played a significant role in the decision by the Scarsdale Town Club (now the Town and Village Club) to admit women as members. According to the Scarsdale Inquirer (11/3/1977, p. 1): The fullest statement in support of admitting women was made by Herbert Hochberg, who served on Marrow's committee. "We cannot ignore that changes have taken place in the role of women in society" Hochberg said. If the club does not admit women, he predicted that it would continue to play a diminishing role in Scarsdale, becoming a "small, private club unable to fulfill" the functions set out in its constitution. Herb is survived by his second wife Carol, his sister Marilyn Littman, daughters Brenda and Judith, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. His oldest daughter Carol predeceased him and Audrey in 1998. Besides MIT and Harvard Business School, Herb supported SHARE Breast Cancer Support in New York City and Kids in the Canyon.

We lost my grandfather last night. He died in his sleep at 95, after a wonderful meal with his wife and daughters. May his memory be a blessing. Full obituary below, written by my Mom. Herbert Leon Hochberg, aged 95, passed away January 7, 2026 at his home in Scarsdale, NY. He was born May 28, 1930 in the Bronx. His father, Aaron Hochberg, migrated from Ukraine to the United States in 1920. In 1928 he returned to his hometown to marry his childhood sweetheart, Lena Heilman, and brought her to the United States. Herb grew up in modest circumstances but with the love and support of his parents, sister Marilyn, and a large extended family. He graduated at age 16 from Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, winning awards in general studies and in mathematics. He then attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (the first Christopher Columbus graduate to do so, he believed), where he majored in electrical engineering. To supplement his parents' contribution toward his tuition he enrolled in the ROTC, and as an upperclassman participated in a cooperative program with General Electric in which he alternated semesters of subsidized study with semesters of employment. He credited MIT with having changed his life and remained a faithful and generous alumnus. After graduating from MIT in 1950 Herb initially worked as an engineer, then attended Harvard Business School, graduating in 1953. He fulfilled his ROTC commitment by working in Philadelphia for the Signal Corps Supply Agency; a high point of his service was receiving a reward for successfully extracting payments from non-performing suppliers. In 1963 he joined Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. in New York as an investment banker, and worked there until his retirement. He held various roles at Ladenburg but was particularly skilled in performing due diligence analysis for public offerings. His research led the firm to turn down a number of companies that turned out to be unsound; conversely, none of the companies he approved for underwriting was liable for losses to investors. After his retirement he continued to perform due diligence analyses on a consultant basis. Herb met Audrey (Golden) during his first year at Harvard Business School when he crashed a freshman mixer at Radcliffe College. They saw each other again at a subsequent mixer, after which Audrey invited him to afternoon tea in her dormitory. They dated for several years and married on June 23, 1955. When Audrey went into politics, serving on the Westchester County Board of Legislators from 1971 to 1992, and then in the New York State Assembly until 2000, Herb was her biggest supporter. He rang doorbells for her during every campaign and never complained when her professional duties took her away from the family. He often said that marrying Audrey was the best decision he ever made. Their long and loving marriage ended with Audrey's death from endometrial cancer in 2005. After Audrey's death Herb married her close friend Carol Stix, who had lost her husband Edgar seven years earlier. Having originally hoped for five good years together, they celebrated their nineteenth wedding anniversary on Herb's 95th birthday, on May 28, 2025. Herb remained close to his extended family throughout his life. He stayed in touch with many family members and attended bar mitzvahs and weddings around the United States and abroad. In his later years he took on a personal mission of helping younger relatives pay off their student loans. Besides family, Herb's other major passion was the outdoors. As a teenager in the Bronx he joined a local Boy Scout troop that went on hikes in Westchester and New Jersey. He later attended Boy Scout Camp and became an Eagle Scout. As an adult he was active in the Westchester Trails Association and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. He was an enthusiastic hike leader, known for leading challenging hikes [1/2].

@ciaran_lee @podia @intercom @destraynor 🤜🤛

@LenMarkidan @podia @intercom @destraynor Love to hear this! Thank you for sharing

We added AI to customer support. Nobody lost their job. At @podia, we rolled out AI in customer support using @intercom's Fin. It now resolves 64% of our customer contacts. When we were exploring platforms, @destraynor told me: “If I could beg you for anything, it’d be just try Fin. Our trial-to-conversion rate is extremely high.” He was right. Our support team spent a good deal of time training Penny, Podia’s chatbot, to handle our most common customer requests. Penny resolves these instantly, and our creators absolutely love her. The “classic” playbook says that’s a reason to downsize. We’re taking a different approach, by using AI to give our team their time back. Penny has afforded our expert support folks more time for the complex, high-context issues where human judgment matters most. And our customers are happier as a result. Instant answers to the simple stuff, and better, more thoughtful help with the more complicated issues. For us, AI isn’t about shrinking the team. It’s about making the team better at the work that actually needs humans. Our customers get faster answers. Our team does more meaningful work. Shoutout to the Intercom team for building a world-class tool, and continuing to make it better. Penny has been improving by about 1% every month!

Have done several now, and have coached several people at Podia and elsewhere through theirs. There are two kinds of sabbaticals. One kind stretches your non-sabbatical weeknights and weekends into full days. I.e. you pause work and spend your time on existing hobbies and personal to-do's. That's often what people do the first time they take a sabbatical. The other kind changes your rhythm entirely, and is a sabbatical from both your usual work life and your usual non-work routines. Personally, I've found the second kind far more fulfilling. Practically speaking, that means: - Extended travel. - At home, not having a to-do list or goal. If you have a goal, then you can fail to reach it. If you fail to reach it, then you've failed at sabbatical, and that's pathetic. - It usually takes me up to a week to get out of feeling like I need to peek at my laptop. After that is where the magic happens. You'll find that things draw your interest, some of them may surprise you. Follow those impulses. Oh, and delete all of your work apps.

If you've taken a sabbatical, I'd love to get your advice! What unique decisions did you make during your sabbatical that made it meaningful? Looking back, what do you wish you'd done differently during your sabbatical? I'd love to hear your specifics. Thank you in advance!

Thinking about switching platforms? You’re not the only one. Busy day for migration requests. Good news: Podia handles them for free → podia.com/switch

@aymanalabdul AI is coming for Fiverr’s entire TAM a lot sooner than its team.

Fiverr CEO not fucking around

Your creator name is your first name + the title of your most recent webinar + your @Stripe account ID.

Marcus Aurelius wrote about productivity ~1,800 years ago. Benjamin Franklin published his takes ~300 years ago. There’s been a productivity book on the NYT bestseller list every week for at least 20 years. And yet, people continue to buy. People buy creators, not content.

Not surprising to see companies that went remote during covid pushing for RTO now. Meanwhile, remote-first teams from “before it was cool” continue to crush. They’re both doing the right thing. Remote only really works if you build the business around it.

AI can already create "better" online courses than 99% of creators. But people buy the creator, not the product. Selling yourself has never mattered more.

@LenMarkidan Show me your cancelled stack.

Most software companies would run better if they canceled half their SaaS tools. Most non-software companies would run better if they subscribed to a few more. 🤷‍♂️

It's been more than a decade since @Groove raised the bar for SaaS content with the launch of the Journey to $100K blog. I am so happy to see it come back in this new form, even better than before. Kudos to @imperfectstrtup and the team!

@marcinbunsch Wow, this post is 🔥! DM for pics 😉💋 #hot

Just wanted to shout out to porn bots for always being there for me - whenever I post, first like always comes from them!

@jasoncharnes @andrewmcodes you get a buck for this one

@andrewmcodes glad you came out victorious my deer friend

I had to go fight or flight on a deer today and he has no idea how close he was to getting rocked before he decided to keep it pushing

@brookeleblanc This is a bit more DIY but the gift stretches out for a year: welcome.storyworth.com

loved this company if there’s a more affordable yet still high quality option. her mother is starting to show signs of memory loss - want to capture as many stories of her life as possible while we can! nostorylost.com/products/selec…

My mom has a very special birthday coming up next month. What are some of the best events, gifts, and ways to celebrate a parent during a milestone bday?

@nickgray lattice is in the arena trying things 😆

@hailleymari Congratulations!

👋 After 16 wonderful weeks off for maternity leave, I’m slowly coming back online and back to work!