Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
My big bet for 2026 (It isn't more vibe coding)
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Hey Reader, Every founder I meet right now is obsessed with engineering. They are arguing over which LLM is faster, which vector database is more scalable, and how to shave three milliseconds off their API response time. They think the "best" tech wins. I’m placing a different bet for 2026. My main focus isn't on the engineering — it’s on Vibe Marketing. Here is the "Clarity Filter" reality: Engineering is becoming a commodity. In a world where AI can help you write code and deploy infrastructure in minutes, "having the tech" is no longer a moat. It’s just the ante to get into the game. The real battle has shifted from the back-end to the front-end of the business: Marketing and Sales. Vibe Marketing isn't about catchy slogans or aesthetic Instagram grids. It’s about:
If your startup is 90% engineering and 10% marketing, you’re building a library that no one is visiting. The job of a 2026 founder is to be a Chief Narrative Officer, not a Chief Technical Officer. If you can’t sell the "vibe" — the transformation and the trust — it doesn't matter how good your code is. The tech gets them to look. The vibe gets them to pay. Which one are you spending 80% of your time on? Speak soon, P.S. Want to get to your first $10K MRR faster? |
Clarity Filter
Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
Hey Reader, Founders love to pitch an inevitable future. They see a clear shift in the market, build a product for that future, and launch. Then they get silent buyers and a dead pipeline. They assume the product is broken. Or the marketing is wrong. But the problem is usually much simpler: they are early. And in an early-stage startup, being ahead of your time is functionally indistinguishable from being wrong. A market can be directionally attractive and still be a terrible opportunity...
Hey Reader, In my last email, I broke down how Sam Altman’s relationship network literally purchased his first company's failure for millions. Most builders read that and thought: "Great, but I don't live in SF and I don't know any VCs." You are looking at networking all wrong. You don’t need billionaires. You need a net of adjacent peers who are 6 to 12 months ahead of you. If you want to know if your current network is there yet, here's a handy validator for ya: Look at your calendar for...
Hey Reader, Founders love the myth of the exceptional product. They believe Silicon Valley legends won because they built better software. Here is the reality. Sam Altman's first company, Loopt, had no real traction. It failed as a consumer product. It was acquired for millions anyway. Not because the tech was brilliant. Because Altman had well-connected VC relationships. When the app failed, his network caught him. The relationships were the infrastructure that literally purchased his...