npm: npmjs.com/package/milieu…
GitHub: github.com/simplyarun/mil…
Apache 2.0. Zero config
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Arun
6.5K posts
Arun
@SimplyArun
design is distribution. design the milieu. building and exploring with AI. design × growth × product × APIs. opinions my own.
San Francisco Katılım Kasım 2006
789 Takip Edilen4.1K Takipçiler
I built an open source CLI to check. Think Lighthouse, but for the agentic web.
One command: npx milieu-cli scan
It checks whether you're blocking AI crawlers, whether you publish machine-readable specs (OpenAPI, llms.txt, MCP, JSON-LD) and whether your product surface is actually discoverable.
Drop a URL. I'll scan it and reply with the result.
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Everyone's optimizing for AI mentions. That's content marketing with a new hat.
Harder question: Can agents actually USE your product?
Agents don't just browse your site. They call your APIs, parse your schemas, and quickly decide whether you're worth integrating with.
Most products fail this test.
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First day in SF and already met Garry Tan at Chipotle on his birthday
Told him what I was building and the guy invited me for an interview
SF is truly the greatest city on Earth
Garry Tan@garrytan
It's my birthday and on my birthday I want to recognize all my haters. Haters do the best marketing. Love your haters.
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I vibe coded an iOS app this week. I called it Pulse. LMK if you'd like to try it!
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Hard agree. This is how I designed the growth loops at SlideShare. It drove a ton of SEO, sustainable, and in a user-centric way. And guess what, we didn't use a single SEO tool other than Google Search Console itself.
Most SEO/AEO/GEO tools these days just promote content slop as the solution to growth, which is very similar to the influencer marketing discourse issue you're calling out.
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I hate where the influencer marketing discourse is going.
Everyone, from founders to growth teams, thinks it’s the unlock.
I lead growth at Gamma (~50M+ users, $100M+ revenue), and influencer marketing is one of our biggest channels.
That’s exactly why you should read this:
Influencer marketing is not a growth strategy.
It’s fuel.
And most people are pouring fuel on something that doesn’t even have an engine.
The engine is a loop:
User creates something → shares it → others see it → they try it → they become users.
If this loop is not already working organically, influencers won’t save you.
They’ll just help you burn money faster.
A simple test:
– Do you see high direct traffic?
– Do users say “friend/word of mouth” when asked how they found you?
If not, you’re not ready.
What influencer marketing actually does is amplify an existing behavior.
It does not create one.
Also, this only works for a certain class of products:
B2C / PLG products where:
- Output is visible
- Output is shareable
- Output is inherently interesting
Think:
Gamma, Lovable etc....
You create something → you show it → distribution happens.
And here’s the part most people miss:
This works best when the product is horizontal in the audience but vertical in action.
Everyone can use it,
but they come to do one specific thing.
Create a deck.
Build a website.
Make music.
That clarity → creates shareable artifacts → powers the loop.
If you’re too horizontal in use case (general-purpose agents, etc.), you don’t get enough natural sharing.
So before you spend $100K on influencers, ask:
Do I already have something worth amplifying?
If not, influencer marketing isn’t your growth lever.
It’s your most expensive mistake.
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roast-my-taste.replit.app
Built this in a few hours with @Replit. Incredible experience @amasad.
Data comes from Lenny's open-source podcast + newsletter archive (lennysdata.com). Go build something with it.
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And a lot of these use highly addictive tactics borrowed from casinos and gambling, so they can show growth to make their investors happy. The success metrics often orient around pure in-the-moment “engagement” because actual learning outcomes are harder to track or beyond the scope of their QBR and product development cycles.
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What’s the most impressive company merch you’ve seen over the past couple of years? e.g. the @notion chore coat, @linear employee gift, @stripepress books...
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Completely resonate with your take. Phenomenal.
A few years ago when I was leading the launch of Apps built on Zoom, one of the first things I advocated for was a “Zoom Apps Fund” (now called Zoom Ventures) where we supported builders on the ecosystem.
This was a huge growth win for us. It supported some of the best apps on the platform, including BrightHire, Fathom notetaker and more.
When AI makes artifacts a commodity, the real product is the MILIEU. The ecosystem. The milieu’s growth is your real growth.
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Lovable is missing the real growth or “generation influence” outside of the ARR posts they keep sharing and that’s their users.
People actually using Lovable and building companies with it. I mean I don’t even hear about them, not even from Lovable.
Where are the founders who built their first product with Lovable. Where is the person who quit their job after launching something with it.
Where is the team that shipped a startup in two weeks because of Lovable.
Those are the stories people want to see. Lovable is a VC backed company and it seems like they are making good money but the real opportunity is much bigger than posting ARR screenshots.
They could literally create their own version of YC just from people building with their product.
Imagine a cohort of founders launching companies with Lovable. Imagine showing the best products built with it every month. Imagine the stories of people building their first startup using Lovable.
Put those people on billboards.
Put them in ads.
Put them all over social media.
Tell real stories about what people are building.
I love MRR and ARR posts.
But honestly they hit very different when they come from bootstrapped companies.
When a bootstrapped company posts 30k or 100k MRR you know exactly what that means.
Someone sat alone building something.
Someone shipped a product.
Someone convinced real customers to pay.
That revenue is survival.
When a VC backed company posts ARR growth it just doesn’t feel the same.
You raised money to grow.
You have a team, marketing budget, distribution of course the numbers will move.
The more interesting story is not the revenue chart. The real story is the companies being built with your product.
That’s the real influence.
Harry Stebbings@HarryStebbings
How does Lovable Hack Social Algorithms to Have Viral Posts: "We have a channel called bee swarming where employees post their content and everyone goes to amplify it. We try to turn every engineer into a marketer and get the whole team posting about things they are excited about. Then marketing puts its full firepower behind the biggest launches to tell the story." @ElenaVerna Biggest lessons on how to make posts go viral @antonosika @lukeharries @eglyman @FoundersPodcast?
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so I've got a story. pinterest hyper-optimized their “board” pages with this exact tactic back in 2018 and got a huge penalty hit. when I joined pinterest to lead SEO, the first thing I did was to undo all of that so they could recover.
gateway pages don't make sense for search, it’s a fundamentally flawed tactic.
better UX (less friction, shorter paths to actual information) always wins, whether it’s for bots or humans
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REPEAT AFTER ME
LLM listicles have never been more important
Takes around 2 weeks to get recommended by Gemini + ChatGPT
This method gets you featured in 100 listicles for $99
Comment LISTICLE + like this post, and I'll DM it to you (must be following)
Sundar Pichai@sundarpichai
We’re bringing new capabilities powered by Gemini models to @googlemaps. With Ask Maps, get answers to complex questions about any place you want. For example it can help with complex requests like "Find me the best 3-hour family hikes in the Grand Tetons and a spot for a packed lunch”. Will try this next time I'm there:) Rolling out now in the US and India.
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@pbakaus @Bfaviero Totally. Oldie but goodie, this is a timeless classic that’s now has newfound relevance for me: webtypography.net The Elements of Typographic Style (applied to the web)
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@SimplyArun @Bfaviero thanks Arun! Yes, knowing what to ask for makes a huge difference :)
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Is there any AI tool that actually does UI Design well? Like building a new app from scratch.
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@Bfaviero I’m obviously biased, but give impeccable.style a try. It should make it better, but don’t expect one shorted brilliance :)
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I learned this way too late in my career..
If you are obsessed about something & think it’s obvious, just know that there’s very high chances it’s NOT obvious to the rest of the world.
Find a way to share it openly, invest in it or even better build something based on it!!
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Everyone says AI is unbundling Google Search.
ChatGPT processes 1.6 billion queries a day. Perplexity grew 340% last year. The narrative writes itself.
But look closer at the numbers and something else is happening.
ChatGPT has 12% of Google's search volume. It sends 190x less traffic to websites.
Google stays intact. The web gets unbundled.
Google saw this coming. They decided to become AI search before anyone else could.
AI Overviews now appear on most informational queries. Organic click-through rates dropped 61% in 18 months. Paid CTR crashed 68%. Zero-click searches for news jumped from 56% to 69%.
Google did this to itself. On purpose.
The logic is simple. If zero-click is inevitable, own it. Make Google the terminal point where queries enter and answers exit, but traffic never leaves.
The numbers tell the advertiser story. Google Search ad spending grew 9% year-over-year in Q1 2025. Click growth was only 4%. That 5% gap is advertisers paying more for fewer clicks.
Google extracts more revenue from less inventory. Short-term, the math works. Long-term, advertisers notice.
Publishers take the hit. They create the content that trains the AI and feeds the summaries. They get nothing back. Traffic gone, attribution meaningless. Just their words, summarized and served to someone who will never visit their site.
Everyone predicted AI would fragment Google's search monopoly. Instead, Google used AI to collapse the open web into a walled garden.
Queries go in, answers come out, and the middle layer disappears.
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@deedydas @grandoldbooks Any plans to add audio support to make this even more accessible? Reading on the screen can be tiring and audio could cross multiple barriers
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Oppenheimer quoted it: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Gandhi read it daily. A billion people live by it.
Now, the Bhagavad Gita is free in English + Sanskrit.
Illustrated, annotated, on any device.
Only on @grandoldbooks: grandoldbooks.com/books/bhagavad…
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