Michael Horne

Pre-revenue with a product almost ready for primetime? You've got leads that could make or break your credibility. Here's where to focus your energy: 1. Value Prop Check Nail down your pitch. But expect to adapt as real-world feedback shows where your message hits or misses. You won't get it right the first time. Plan to iterate. 2. Scrappy Sales Team Assemble a small team: you (CEO/Founder) plus one or two sharp engineers with decent customer presence. At this stage, being good learners matters more than being good closers. 3. Test Your Sales Process Start with a basic playbook. Treat it like a lab experiment. Track everything. Learn fast. Adjust on the fly. Always ask questions before you pitch. 4. Find Your First Believers Target early adopters who feel the pain your product solves. Dig into their world. Refine your ICP based on what you learn. 5. Pilot with Partners Lock in pilot deals for low (but not too low) initial dollars. Think of it as R&D with potential revenue. Always charge something! It tests willingness to pay. 6. Fast Feedback Loops Set up quick feedback loops between customers and your product team. Iterate like your runway depends on it. Because it does. 7. Insights Over Instincts Make every customer interaction a chance to gather intel. Use it to refine your product and pitch until you find the winning formula. -- Seven focus areas. Execute relentlessly. Stay adaptable. This is how you move from pre-revenue to market-ready.

@sundeep Sales people discovering claude code + chrome extension = infinite "Hey, just circling back..." emails

I literally laughed out loud…

@businessbarista Claude. Definitely usable way beyond just coding. Systems thinking, reverse engineering, process development, living knowledge systems. Massive jump in productivity across any build activity.

I want to start a community dedicated to Claude Code. It’s become the gateway drug to coding and experiencing the power of AI for tons of people. This will be a space for people to share killer use cases, agentic workflows, proven prompts, and connect with other CC obsessives. Comment “Claude” if you want to join.

@signulll @cremieuxrecueil What could go wrong for an economy with an ever-shrinking customer base?

@cremieuxrecueil game over.

Wow Japan TFR, 2024: 1.15 Catholic Poland TFR, 2024: 1.10

Most deep-tech startups fail slowly. The ones that win: build fast, stay in the customer's world, hold the process, focus on revenue, and scale only what already works. Discipline is the shortcut.

After years working with deep-tech, SaaS, and IP startups, I've watched the same patterns win and the same mistakes kill. This is the operating philosophy I keep coming back to: 10 Rules for Building Something That Matters 1. Focus Is the Strategy Your greatest risk is doing too much. Define the narrowest market where you can win decisively and concentrate almost all execution there. Velocity compounds; dilution kills. 2. Build the Simplest Version of the Future That Works Deep-tech founders over-engineer by default. Customers pay for outcomes, not elegance. Ship something real, put it in the world, and let reality replace assumptions. 3. Stay in the Customer's World Talk to customers continuously. Observe them in their environment. Field conditions reveal what labs cannot. Insight comes from lived context, not internal debate. Customer conversations are your highest-leverage activity. 4. Design a Company That Can Sell A product without a commercial engine is research. Define your ideal customer profile (ICP), sharpen the value message, and establish a repeatable path to revenue. Revenue is the only proof that your insight matters. 5. Make Culture a Weapon A disciplined team outmaneuvers better-funded competitors. Set explicit expectations, measure output, and remove blockers immediately. Standards are not negotiable; they are the foundation of speed. 6. Build Loops, Not One-Off Wins Funnels end. Loops compound. Design systems where each deployment improves the next demo, each customer sharpens the roadmap. Deep-tech cycles are long; loops shorten them. 7. Fund Acceleration, Not Exploration Raise capital to scale what already works, not to skip validation. The machine must work at small scale before it deserves more fuel. Capital should compress time, not substitute for discipline. 8. Prioritize Facts Over Narratives The stories founders tell themselves cause slow failure. Measure cycle times, adoption, repeatability, margins, and sales velocity. Reality is the scoreboard. Ignore it and you lose. 9. Make Hard Decisions Early Bad prototypes, unclear markets, and underperformers don't fix themselves. These decisions are uncomfortable; make them anyway. Every delayed correction compounds cost and slows momentum. 10. Hold a Bold Vision, Execute Ruthlessly in the Present Your ambition can be unreasonable, but your operations cannot be. Separate the future you're building from the weekly work required to reach it. Precision today is what fuels scale tomorrow.

@karpathy is talking about programming, but substitute in your profession (sales, marketing, product) and it reads the same. The alien tool landed everywhere. Figure out how to hold it or fall behind.

@Tim_Denning The 9-5 job isn't the cage. Boring repetition without growth is. I've found that learning and building daily is where the meaning lives.

9-5 jobs aren’t the problem. Having no meaning for your life is the problem.

@javilopen And just for fun, here's a comparison of the startup math for an equiv $80K engineer: SF: ~35% total tax burden, 8% employer overhead. Spain: ~55% total tax burden, 31% employer overhead. If you're an investor, which would you prefer to invest in?

@javilopen Agreed. Example numbers: An €80K startup employee in Spain (already half the SF equivalent) costs the employer ~€105K. Employee takes home ~€48K. Government takes ~€57K. In Spain, the state is your silent co-founder taking 55% of comp before your startup earns a euro.

Spain 🌞 will soon be known as the "AI Hub for Creators". We have: - California-like weather (especially in the Mediterranean area). - Much lower costs than in the US, Germany, etc. - A great public healthcare system. - The best food in the world. What are you waiting for?

@IMAC2 @pmaceoin @svpino Agree the trains are "potentially" high speed, but they are not reliable by any stretch of the imagination. Sitges to Barcelona commuter train reliability is almost comical.

The health system is kinda collapsing now when you have to wait 1 year to make a test to know if you have something potentially serious. Still better than others, but don't be mistaken. It's not free. We pay it all when our social security which is around 35% of our salaries. The trains... 😂 They are fast, but they are not realiable at all. At least the government trains (renfe) and specially these last few years. I also think it needs the grindset culture to maintain itself.

100% agree here on the upsides of Spain, but when we talk about tech in comparison with the US: - Taxes are too high - Salaries are too low - Grind mentality is absent The entire system is designed to keep you away from entrepreneurship and toward employment. There’s no better place to live than Spain. There’s no better place to earn and build companies than the US.

@pmaceoin @svpino 'Grindset needs to die' is a fine personal philosophy, and you're welcome to it. It's also why the original post is wishful thinking. You can't create a world-class AI hub on 40-hour weeks and August off.

@svpino "Grind mentality absent" Hopefully along with the wankers who spout that kind of crap. You can't sell me any harder. Spain also has a very functioning highspeed rail network and a pretty good healthcare system. "The grindset" needs to die and people need to live instead.

@iamjif_eth @svpino But startups are about grind mindset. Outside of statups? Sure, regular Spain employment is about "life mindset" and quite cushy. Polar opposites.

@svpino "Grind mentality is absent" = "Life mentality is present"

Been in the BCN area for about a year now. Can confirm that both of you are right. The economic incentives just aren't there for Spain startups. Taxes are high on both sides: employee (up to 47%) and employer (25-30%). Few reasons to set up shop here vs. California. But I think the gap goes deeper than economic policy. Spain optimizes for different things: security, benefits, and time off. Working weekends for an office job in Spain? Basically unheard of. That's not a criticism; it's just the opposite of US startup culture. I'm not saying driven startups can't exist here in Barcelona. They do. But it's both unusual and a challenging environment, economically and culturally. Weather, food, wine, life outside work? Genuinely better than the Bay (even with Napa nearby). BCN and SF startup cultures are almost mirror opposites. Maybe AI productivity lets a 40-hour Spain week compete with a 60-hour US one that barely uses it. But that's a temporary arbitrage and not a structural advantage. Spain is an incredible place to live. But the US is still where you go to build.

@skwthomas Nice. Build and publish. Straightforward call, given all your work over the years.

@signulll @sweatystartup Nick’s just doing his usual rage bait here. Tuning your email responses for clarity with AI is a solid use of the tech, especially if it understands your business, underlying tech, and preferred style. You still have to confirm intent of the generated/tuned message.

@sweatystartup this is the wrong lesson to take away from this & a really bad course of action on top. if they are doing this it means your communication or process is useless. this is a symptom not the actual disease.

I've caught several of my employees running all of their communication through AI. We're on the verge of banning it in all of my companies. It isn't secure. It is a waste of time. And it is visible to clients, partners and team members from a mile away. Stop doing this!

@itsolelehmann Barcelona, or stay in Sitges if you want slightly slower pace but 20 minutes from Barcelona. If you need it, Digital Nomad Visa is easy to get.

I'm researching our next city to live in Europe, here are my criteria: - (mostly) walkable (also with a baby stroller..) - good level of english - over 500k people (I lived in berlin -> then small 40k village in cyprus-> I need the city again, at least nearby) - nature in and around the city - major airport - good startup ecosystem - good english level - (mostly) sunny climate - tax system that doesn't destroy you Right now this is the list I have with these criteria - Madrid 🇪🇸 - Lisbon 🇵🇹 - Barcelona 🇪🇸 I lived in Cyprus the last year and people speak amazing english here, so that's def a big plus for a country that has that Cyprus is nice in many ways, but just way too small and village-like for me If I don't care that much about the weather (still not sure about this), there are these options: - Amsterdam🇳🇱 - Berlin 🇩🇪(love hate relationship, lived there 11 years, want to be sure before I come back) - Munich 🇩🇪 (I like that its so close to mountains, Italy etc) Switzerland is also nice but I think it's a bit too polished and structured for my liking. Might come there later in life ;). I still have a small small voice in my head that tells me to check out the US more. My main problem is that it's SO FAR away from my family. What we'll do next year is to say 2 months in a couple of cities/places and then decide Might also come 2 months to the US just to get a better picture, it's possible that I won't like it as a place to live. I also have accepted the fact, that there is NO perfect place to begin with. There's always up and downsides.

I think the issue is there will be a lot of dead towns. Cruising through Spain today, we see towns filled with elderly, no children, and few local businesses serving an ever shrinking population. It’s about the death of a culture, not about worthless property. AI and robotics won’t help preserve Spanish culture. Nor Italian.

@MichaelAArouet You keep repeating this mantra and to be honest, it's kinda absurd. There's already a lot of vacant and worthless properties in Italy and Spain. It will keep that way and yes, go worse. But it doesn't matter, because places where property is already expensive, will go up.

@Aladey LaunchRight.com

Phase 3. Drop your domain in the comments 👇 My AI agent will appraise it. 📷🤖

@dvassallo You’re saying they have to be entertained with technology, or…what? Children in other countries entertain themselves and interact with people at the table, as it has always been. iPads are a crutch for the parent, not the child.

Put yourself in the shoes of a 5yr old. Restaurants must be incredibly painful. Nothing to do, sitting, endless waiting. And they are literally forced to be there. Giving them an ipad (if that’s what they like) is the least you can do for the cruelty you’re inflicting on them.