Asked Claude Code to do a complete rethink of our UX/UI, like, channel a top 1% designer, really reimagine the whole experience. It implemented dark mode. So… bravo, I guess.
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Michael Ulin
194 posts
Michael Ulin
@michaelulin
I build AI companies for a living. Founder @WhimseyLabs. 3x AI founder. Ex-CTO @paxtonai, Ex-Head of AI @zestyai. Bend, OR.
Bend, OR Katılım Kasım 2008
2.1K Takip Edilen318 Takipçiler
Michael Ulin retweetledi
Recent studies in neuroscience and psychology are reframing ADHD not merely as a set of cognitive hurdles but as a powerful driver of breakthrough creativity and innovation.
Long stereotyped for difficulties with focus, attention, and impulse control, individuals with ADHD traits often exhibit superior divergent thinking—the capacity to generate a wide array of novel ideas by connecting distant or unrelated concepts. This stems from reduced adherence to rigid mental frameworks, enabling freer conceptual expansion and the production of more original, unconventional solutions than neurotypical counterparts. Heightened mind-wandering, especially when deliberate (purposefully allowing thoughts to drift), acts as a fertile source for this creativity, bypassing conventional boundaries to yield abundant "outside-the-box" insights.
Complementing this cognitive flexibility is a neurological drive for novelty rooted in lower baseline dopamine signaling. This creates a chronic need for stimulation, translating into exploratory, risk-tolerant behavior and a propensity for adventure—qualities that can disrupt routine settings but prove invaluable in dynamic fields. Impulsivity, often reframed as rapid action initiation, becomes a catalyst for pursuing bold ideas and seizing opportunities in high-stakes environments.
These traits align closely with the profiles of many successful entrepreneurs, inventors, and pioneers. In fast-evolving creative and innovative economies, the ADHD brain's wiring for quick associative leaps, tolerance of uncertainty, and motivation through novelty-seeking provides a distinct edge, turning potential challenges into engines of originality and progress.
Emerging evidence from 2025–2026 research reinforces this view: studies link stronger ADHD traits to elevated creative achievements via mediated mind-wandering, intuitive insight-driven problem-solving, and higher real-world inventive output, highlighting neurodiversity's role in fueling societal advancement.
[Maisano, H., et al. (2026). ADHD Symptoms Predict Distinct Creative Problem-Solving Styles and Superior Solving Ability. Personality and Individual Differences (February 2026)]
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Michael Ulin retweetledi
Traditional Sportsbooks: "You're winning too much. We're limiting your account to $5 bets." 🚫
Prediction Markets: "You're winning? Great. Here's more liquidity." 🤝
The model has shifted.
Use Tenki AI to find the inefficiencies, calculate your edge, and trade where your skill is actually an asset.
Intelligence is only a threat to a rigged house. In a real market, it's currency.
Trung Phan@TrungTPhan
The Economist has a great piece on strategy sportsbetting apps use to throttle smart bettors: ▫️Skilled players are “sharps” and given “stake restrictions” if they play too well (bets are capped). ▫️Rest of players called “Square”. ▫️In 2025, 4.3% of active UK accounts had a “stake factor” below the maximum bet allowance of 100%. ▫️Sportsbook will take bets with a profit margin as low as 4.5%. ▫️If they are able to do good “player-profiling” and keep the “sharps” from playing, the profit margin can reach 10-20%. ▫️As important as keeping out “sharps” is hooking “whales”, the deep-pocketed players that are willing to keep playing (and losing) large sums. ▫️Some “whales” are actually “sharps” in disguise, though. They’ll lose a bunch of bets to lull the sportsbook then put down a massive bet when they have an edge. ▫️While there is a risk of a “whale” being a “sharp”, the value of a real “whale” is so high that sportsbook will take the risk ▫️“In March 2024 PointsBet, raised its share of online sports-gambling revenue in New Jersey from 11% to 24% after wooing a single cash-spouting customer away from DraftKings.” (I can confirm that this wasn’t me). ▫️How sportsbook profile players: > Playing on Mobile is a good sign (where majority of people play) > Playing on PCs is a bad sign (it’s easier to compare odds and run models) > E-wallets are a red flag (sportsbooks prefer debit direct deposit that can attach a player to a single account; e-wallet is more anonymized and players can move cash between sportsbook more quickly to shop for the best odds) > Women bettors are a red flag (most bettors are men and “sharps” often use women to place bets) ▫️First wagers are a major tells (typical bettors go after top leagues — NFL, NBA, EPL — and do so near the start of the game). ▫️Popular bets for “squares”: who will win, scoring margins and how star player will perform (also, they love multi-leg parlays). ▫️“Sharps” go after less popular leagues and place bets as soon as odds are published, when they are most mispriced. They also go after less popular bets such as “pts in Q3” or stats from a random player (“Sharps” rarely do parlays and don’t withdrawal winnings often). ▫️One gambling consultant tells The Economist that “By the time a customer places his first bet, [sportsbooks] are 80-90% certain they know the lifetime value of the account.” ▫️”Sportsbooks look at a player’s ‘closing-line value’ — a measure that compares the odds at which he bets with those available right before a match begins. If it is consistently ahead of the market over his first ten wagers, he is highly likely to beat the book in the long run.” ▫️Sportsbook mathematically monitor players and creates a new risk score every 6-8 hours (risk score = estimate of probability that customers will wind up unprofitable). ▫️E-wallet users, women and bets over $100 are flagged. These suspicious bettors are given 30% of maximum bet (and proven sharps only allowed 1%). ▫️High-skilled players will often get a “beard” to bet on their behalf. Most sportsbooks ban this practice but it is widespread. ▫️Safest “beards” are close friends and relatives because you can mostly rely on them to pay out any winnings. The “beards” try to look like degens (playing at 3am, bet non-stop and doing ridiculous parlays) before placing a winning bet. ▫️The most effective strategy for “sharps” is “whale-flipping”. Find a losing gambler, then ask to put a (likely) large winning bet amongst their pool of guaranteed losers. ▫️Once “sharps” max out the people they can use as “beards”, they tap professional networks called “movers”. These “movers” employ a bunch of “mules” who can put down bets on the behalf of the network. Low-end movers charge 10-20% while high-end movers charge 50% of winnings. *** Lots other great details here: economist.com/christmas-spec…
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Reflections on 2025:
1. Leaving something you built is hard, even when it's right
2. The AI winners are getting 100x leverage. Everyone else is writing better emails.
3. Hard problems attract great people
4. No one saying "no" to your idea? Probably not disruptive enough
5. Build in public. Maximize luck surface area.
Wrote up 9 lessons from a year of hard choices and new beginnings 👇
open.substack.com/pub/pioneering…
(Pic from Mt. Bachelor in Bend to ring in the New Year)
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@ExaAILabs wyd if you’re not building a billion dollar wrapper over people search
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Introducing state-of-the-art People Search:
You can now semantically search over 1 billion people using a hybrid retrieval system backed by finetuned Exa embeddings.
Try it: exa.ai
We also created an eval: exa.ai/blog/people-se…
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But I could still choose how I processed it. That's the "write it on your heart" part. You're not pretending bad things are good.
You're deciding that today, this one, right now, is still worth showing up for.
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Joy and gratitude aren't things that happen to you. They're choices you make, over and over, especially when circumstances don't cooperate.
Building a startup, I've had days that objectively sucked. Deals fell through. Tech broke. Plans unraveled. The external facts didn't change.
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Been thinking about this Ralph Waldo Emerson line: "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
At first it sounds like Instagram-level toxic positivity. It's not. Here's what I think he actually meant:
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I’ve been thinking about founders through an evolutionary lens. It’s almost as if nature keeps a small percentage of people wired to push into uncertainty, break equilibrium, and test new terrain. They’re costly, rare, and often uncomfortable once things stabilize - but without them, systems calcify and become fragile. Entrepreneurship feels less like a career choice and more like an inherited role.
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@michaelulin @TryTenkiAI I can dm you instead. You can follow me back so I can have access to your dm
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Michael Ulin retweetledi
The prediction market space just got a lot more interesting.
Gemini received CFTC approval this week to launch a regulated prediction market platform in the U.S. After a five-year licensing journey, the Winklevoss twins are officially entering the arena alongside Kalshi and Polymarket.
Cameron Winklevoss put it boldly: "Prediction markets have the potential to be as big or bigger than traditional capital markets."
We agree.
Here's what this signals:
→ Regulatory momentum is real. The CFTC under Acting Chair Caroline Pham is actively supporting this space.
→ Major players are going all-in. Robinhood, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and now Gemini—the institutional interest is undeniable.
→ The market is maturing fast. Industry projections put the TAM at $95B by 2035, with 46% annual growth.
At Tenki, we're building the AI forecasting infrastructure to help traders navigate these markets with better data and sharper predictions. More regulated exchanges means more opportunities—for traders and for the ecosystem as a whole.
This is exactly the kind of validation that turns a niche into a category.
investmentnews.com/fintech/gemini…
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Most prediction market traders on @Kalshi and @Polymarket size bets by vibes.
Bad idea.
We built a free Kelly Criterion calculator—plug in your edge, get your optimal bet size.
Stop leaving money on the table (or blowing up your bankroll).
trytenki.ai/tools/bet-calc…
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@michaelulin @TryTenkiAI @Kalshi @Polymarket Haven’t seen it yet; not in spam either. Patiently awaiting your greatness!
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@michaelulin @TryTenkiAI @Kalshi @Polymarket Can you email me this + your fundraising materials?
evan@talokcapital.com ✌🏼
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@evanbuhler @TryTenkiAI @Kalshi @Polymarket Well - just the right amount of degenerate ;) wrote more on the thesis here: pioneeringthoughts.substack.com/p/on-catching-…
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@TryTenkiAI @michaelulin @Kalshi @Polymarket Kalshi and Polymarket without the degenerate noise. Hmmm 🤔
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Most of us learn risk in a bell curve world. But the highest-stakes games, VC returns, wildfires, creative success, follow power laws. And power laws break our brains.
This @veritasium video is the best 45-min primer on probabilistic thinking I've seen in a while.
youtu.be/HBluLfX2F_k?si…
YouTube
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The methodology for rigorous forecasting has existed for decades.
Almost nobody uses it.
It's been trapped in academic research and $2M consulting engagements.
AI unlocks it for everyone. That's what we're building.
Full vision here:
open.substack.com/pub/pioneering…
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Michael Ulin retweetledi
Happy Thanksgiving 🦃
Building Tenki has been a ride. Grateful for our investors, team, and especially our early customers and waitlist crew.
More to come. Thanks for being here.
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