Shane Lykins

Remove your free plan. Free users are leeches. They increase support, server costs, and make you build features your paying customers don’t want. Less than 3% of free users ever convert. VC startups can afford free plans because they’re optimizing for growth, not profit. If you’re an indie founder, never give away your product for free.

Content engineer. I feel like a a horse salesman when Henry Ford's on his come up. I make content by having an idea, posting it, seeing reactions, and then iterating but also just making it up as I go. Very successful for me. But that's not how it's happening anymore. It feels like the ballers are looking at data and AI to 10x output. Their content and media teams look closer to engineers than they do creative. They're setting up interesting systems that turn one piece of content into many. It's appears to be 10 times more effective. My question to anyone who's in this world: what have you seen that's working as it relates to content and using AI? Personally I've not cracked the code but I want to know what everyone else is doing for systems. Pat Walls at Starter Story had one of the most amazing workflows I've ever seen where his two or three person team is putting out two to three long-form YouTube videos a week and many short-form posts. They track is all like crazy. He's using AI in such a wonderful way.

jfc....

What are your top 3 dream companies to work for right now?

our first southwestern formal wedding