gabe farran

My first business got shut down by my 4th grade teacher. Since I havent posted in a while, and because I’ll be posting more, here’s a proper introduction: In elementary school I turned the playground into a marketplace for squishy toys. I paid classmates in coins to sell them for me, came home with a backpack full of cash, and got shut down two weeks later. That experience stuck with me, not because of the money, but because it showed me something early: If you understand what people want, what shapes their decisions, and what stands in their way, you can build things that actually work. I’ve been testing that ever since. In middle school I started video editing for content creators (which showed me how digital platforms create value). I’ve also co-owned a luxury resale venture and briefly ran a growth agency. In high school I started building software. Right now I’m working on: • Viewd.me — the only platform for theme pages • Consciousspend.com — software that shows how companies actually operate before you buy from them Most of what I spend time thinking about and working on revolves around understanding how things actually function, markets, companies, incentives, and the decisions people make within them. That’s where most of my posts tend to come from: - where attention and distribution are shifting - how companies actually operate behind the scenes - what’s changing inside the creator economy - what I’m building and learning in real time I’m based in Chicago and currently finishing high school, exploring several paths forward, from business programs in New York and LA to alternative routes that would allow me to build full-time. Always open to meeting new people, especially founders, operators, and anyone building in the ethical tech or creator economy space. Feel free to reach out ✌

@virtualkhoa Fordham or NYU

@gabefarran Welcome back. Where are you going for college?

i think im shad*wbanned.. prove me wrong pls

Most people are using Codex reasoning levels wrong. Here’s how you should actually use them: • Low → quick questions, tiny UI tweaks, simple edits • Medium → normal development tasks, UI work, smaller backend logic • High / Very High → complex architecture, debugging tricky issues, anything that requires deeper reasoning The mistake is leaving it on high all the time. Not every task needs heavy reasoning. If you match the level to the task, responses are often faster, cleaner, and you burn way less usage. After using Codex a lot, you start to realize the reasoning setting is basically a performance dial, not just a “quality” setting. Most people never touch it, but it makes a huge difference.

@oliverbrocato what platform?

WE’RE SO COOKED. I just one shotted this entire whole launch video with 3 prompts. It's over.

“Make your product a painkiller, not a vitamin.” What does that actually mean? I think it looks something like this: On short-form platforms, people stack videos on top of each other — gameplay under podcasts or TV clips. Not because it adds information. Because it holds attention. One piece of content often isn’t enough anymore. So people add stimulation. And here’s the strange part: A lot of the same people watching content like this are also downloading apps that limit screen time or block social media entirely. Which means we’ve quietly built a whole layer of products whose only job is protecting us from other products. That’s a signal. When users start needing defenses, it usually means the original system is creating friction or overload somewhere. Short term → tools that help people cope win. Long term → the biggest opportunities usually come from removing the problem instead of managing it.

how it feels to make it through a work session without hitting any limits on LLM's

how i feel with my triple monitor setup using 3 LLM chats at once while cracked out on caffeine

A subset of startups is focused on one outcome: informed choices. A few examples: • localizefood.com — helps consumers finds real local farms, countering consolidation • @oasishealthapp — Indexing the world's scientific information on nutrition and wellness. • @modernaction_io — lets users review legislation and contact officials • @conscious_spend shows how companies truly operate A convergence of three shifts is driving this: 1. Information is often fragmented or hard to access (or not shared at all). 2. Consumers increasingly want more information at their fingertips. 3. Technology now makes it possible for solopreneurs and small teams to build tools that surface and organize that information for everyone. What other examples are you aware of? or use?

A Singaporean web crawler almost cost me thousands of dollars in API calls. (Around $15) It ran 600+ company searches on my platform, which accidentally gave me a real dataset of ~670 scores. Patterns > individual results. Learned more from distributions in one night than weeks of testing. Blocked the crawler and saved the data.

are communities still the move on X?

@cgtwts 🤣

"Claude usage limit reached. Your limit will reset at 7 AM”

Working on a screen all day to buy a life away from screens

@Kimi_Moonshot is so darn good

why do you have to be 18 to have a apple developer acc 😭 they hating on the young builders by doin that

I have a message that automatically sends when people open my dms from years ago… Anyone know how to get rid of this?

@rincidium love it

World's first on-brand AI. Introducing Bloom.

@rincidium i swear ive had this idea subconsciously

The 1% Trap. Most of you reading this are already in the top 1%, and don’t even realize it. Whether you’ve made $1M, or simply care about your health, growth, or finances, you’re doing better than 99% of people. But your feed is flooded with people who are 100x or 1000x ahead by whatever metric you measure yourself against. By being in the top 1%, you end up comparing yourself to the top 1% of the top 1%. It never ends. It’s tough, especially when your job or goals require being on social media. I’ve definitely hit points where that constant comparison messes with me , even down to college apps and where I’m at in life. But I’m realizing this: Gratitude and perspective are the only ways out of the 1% trap. There’s always someone ahead, but that doesn’t mean you’re behind.

clients are finding me through LLM's I havent setup any LLM SEO. LLM SEO is printing people money. brb doing a deep dive