To shut Datagen down with $20m still sitting in the bank waiting to be deployed I needed to be highly confident that it’ll be best for everyone around the table. Even if it’ll take many of them long time to understand that.

I’m still wondering how to conclude the Datagen story On one hand, we didn’t return money with a high multiple On the other, we inspired 120 of the most talented ppl I know to build tech used by millions around the world, every single day Personally I’d consider it a success.

Pivots are tricky in VC-backed startups. For a seed-stage company, it's almost inevitable. For a growth-stage company, it's almost impossible.

when users get really panicked when something in your product breaks, you know that you did something good

note to self: my engineer brain will always pick building over marketing. I should learn how to fight back

parenting a toddler in the current llm era is fascinating. you actually get to see how they both move from memorizing stuff to thinking to reasoning.

building solo = aiming for a large TAM of small businesses. it's exciting cause it lets me touch people directly and change their lives with something I created. 1 of 100 will actually message me back about the impact Claire had on them. but when it happens - it's priceless.

task: extract 200+ influencers from SocialCat before trial expires so I can reach out for partnerships. solution (until recently): code, pagination, data processing, bot detection bypass, proxies, etc. solution (now): ask Claude for Chrome. Just works. As close to a PA as