ethan

Interesting thought about continuous improvement. I do think there are true instances of disruption but continuous improvements still tends to be underrated.

If you’ve been following vibe-coded games over the last month (and have tried making one yourself), it should be abundantly obvious that we are very close to someone building a “creation” ecosystem—or App Store—where anyone can be a game developer. And success of the creators within this future ecosystem will be determined by pure merit of their concepts, not technical execution. The only gap that needs to be closed for this ecosystem to exist is abstracting away the remaining pieces that are too complicated for the layman: authentication, server networking, and deployment. Once that is achieved, the only thing left for a creator to do is dream up their concept and click publish. And suddenly, we will have millions of people making 3D online games with graphics comparable to N64.

When it comes to brand creation, the long and steady route may be the best way to achieve iconic status. I was listening to the latest episode of @AcquiredFM which covered the history of @ROLEX over the week-end. It hit me that when it comes to brand building, sometimes the best move is no move at all—resisting the urge to evolve with trends or chase shifting consumer preferences. Instead, the product itself takes on the stories that have happened throughout its history, and as its owner, you become part of that legacy. This may not apply to technology where a new entrant could take it all... but in consumer... sometimes, the best choice is to do nothing and let time work its magic.

In these uncertain times, all you can do as an individual and leader is to keep pushing hard in the ways that are under your control. Say what you have to say. Join all the webinars and groups you need to. Post what you have to post. And then, get back to work. Don't get distracted by the noise.

@awilkinson Funny thing we worked on this prior to ChatGPT at Frank And Oak where we'd match customers to specific looks and then score incoming products to match their stye and fit...

Men: you dress like shit. Seriously, most of you look like dopes. I'm not any better. For years, I'd wear the same uniform: hoodie, Patagonia jacket, and some dorky but comfortable shoes. After getting divorced though, I knew I needed to get my shit together. I hired a "Personal Stylist" (actually not that expensive) and had her send me a whole bunch of outfits. And I started getting compliments daily! It felt amazing! Because after all: the outfit makes the man. We think we need to get ripped. But honestly, wearing a well-layered and color coordinated outfit and nice shoes is 90% of the battle. Women care way more about what you wear than whether or not you have a six pack. It was awesome, but kind of annoying having to depend on this woman to not look like a schmoe. But then something crazy happened: I started just asking ChatGPT instead. Every day, I'd upload a photo of whatever pants I was wearing and say "complete this outfit". I was amazed by how good it was. And it got better over time, as I trained a custom GPT on my wardrobe. Suddenly I didn't need my personal stylist—I had an AI one. But my ChatGPT based system was kind of fiddly. It required prompting and uploading lots of photos and messing with instructions to produce something good. So, I saw an opportunity. I called up my friend @humza_j and told him I wanted to turn this into a thin wrapper app. That was about 4 months ago, and now we have a beta that uses @OpenAI and a few other APIs to achieve the same thing in a beautiful app. TLDR: it's called Vibe and here's how it works: 1. Take photos of all your key wardrobe items (t-shirts, pants, overskirts, jackets, watches, etc). 2. Tell it what kind of outfits you need (date, work, etc) as well as the season (summer, winter, etc). 3. It generates beautifully layered and coloured coordinated outfits utilizing your wardrobe items and then renders an image of what that outfit looks like. It's really cool. We have a beta live on the iOS App Store called (Vibe - AI Stylist) . It's still kind of rough, but you can see where it's going and play with it. But I have a problem: I don't know what to do with it. I don't know the first thing about scaling an app like this. I need someone to take it over, go raise some money for it, and turn it into something. I actually think it's a great idea and a really well built app, but now I need someone young and hungry to turn it into a real business. I'm down to give someone 50%+ of the equity. Who should run it?

Congrats! Excited to see the progress at @NumeralTax

Attended the first edition of the Rilla Masters which brought together hundreds of the top contractors in North America - to talk about sales coaching and business growth. The home services industry has been booming since the pandemic with a significant surge in demand but also innovation. Private equity's entry into the space has undeniably raised the stakes as well. Quite inspiring to see.

Likely, the best place to build generational wealth in 2025 is... Not in SaaS Not in DTC Not in Agencies Not even in AI... But in the trades. There has been a significant growing trend of private equity firms investing in skilled-trade businesses, particularly plumbing, heating, and air conditioning companies. Since 2022, nearly 800 such companies have been acquired, transforming the home services industry. I love under the radar transformations that are reshaping not just industries but also our lives as consumers.

Excited about this one

great take

Management is about dealing with daily complexity - leadership is about creating simplicity. NZ needs to simplify its core Gov framework first - make it simple and streamlined. Then we can focus on being the best country in the world in those core areas. Everything else flows from there.

Big fan of perplexity and how they are carving out their own path.

From $1 a day to $2B in revenue with no outside funding is crazy. I learnt about @NMowbray23 's story in a recent episode of @myfirstmilpod and it's well worth the listen especially if you are building a physical goods company.

Seeking a driven Prompt Engineer to join the agentic revolution! Curiosity and fast learner are by far the most important criteria. Otherwise... - Experience in developing GenAI and LLM applications. - Experience interacting with GPT-4o or other foundational models (Claude, Gemini, LLama, etc.) - Understanding of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning concepts. - Proficiency in Python or similar programming languages for AI model interaction. - Any education in Comp Sci, ML, Data Science is nice to have but not required. I don't care if you've played with prompt engineering at a company or on your own—what matters is the time committed. Flexibility on full-time or contract. Remote but based in Canada. Hit me up in DM if you are serious.

Perplexity Deep Research surpasses leading models in performance—scoring 93.9% accuracy on the SimpleQA benchmark.

I remember when companies used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on research papers from Gartner or Forrester... Never again

Great resource if you're ever looking for standard legal docs like privacy policies, service agreements, etc. builder-blueprints.com

New colorways of Norda 001 and 002 are dropping tomorrow! Don't sleep on this one.

And to follow-up on my previous post... Verticalized agents = AI solving a specific business problem It's ultimately the answer as to why AI will disrupt every industry. Whether it's crypto or AI, new technologies begin by sparking widespread optimism—almost like magic. But they change the world when they start solving real, often unsexy, business problems. Like Uber did with hailing taxis. Business owners or companies rarely need new technology. They need concrete immediate solutions to their actual problems. For customer X in vertical Y... Are you helping them to save money or make money? Are you speaking directly to their specific needs? How fast can you demonstrate tangible benefits? Does your solution neatly integrate in their workflow? Don't be afraid to embarrassed by how narrow your answers are.

Love this. Absolutely in agreement that ultimately it's not about the technology but the job to be done.