Improvisation is the biggest skill, how Claude kills thinking, brainwashing brain
Improvisation is the biggest skill there is. And it's exactly the one Claude kills, it brainwashes your brain into not thinking.
One month in Antler
Crazy to think it's already been one month in the Antler residency. Today we spoke with the team and they're letting us stay longer, giving us more time to see how far we can take this. It was exciting to see they believe in us, but at the same time it was a clear signal to push even harder.
Today we had another demo. Our biggest value prop is cutting the cost of analyzing deals, though today we met a client who only gets around 10 of them a month.
In that kind of situation you have two choices: rationally say he isn't your ICP, or come up with another value prop.
Of course my co-founder chose the second one. He sold them on something they might be interested in, something we don't have yet but only started building recently. What seemed like a dead end ended up as a second booked demo, now with decision makers.
That is kind of fantastic. In sales, when you're just starting, you sell everything, and if you need to, you build it. Once you get going you need a few things: a better understanding of the customer, more runway, and money to raise. Selling whatever the customer needs, in the beginning when you don't yet have a clear sense of where you stand, is the best way to evolve your product.
Also today Anthropic opened Fable 5 back up. I always think about how I use AI for my work. The role of coding is shifting from writing code to actually figuring out the best system designs, the precise architecture, and the algorithms. Benchmarks are what truly matter now. Though sometimes I think I obsess over it too much. I notice this pattern happens when we don't have a lot of time and try to build something quick, and often a shortcut is the only way to do it.
But it's really important to step back and later dive deep into the whole infrastructure Claude built. Without properly understanding your own codebase (and believe me, most people nowadays don't), more and more in the future you'll find yourself understanding less and less how your own product actually works.
Today I also watched The Social Network. It's the second, maybe third time, though the last time was 4 years ago.
It was kind of weird seeing the whole story again, but this time not from my parents' place in the Czech Republic, but being in the epicenter, in one of the best accelerators in the world, and in downtown San Francisco.
For me it was fascinating how Facebook exploded. That's what happens when you build a truly fascinating product. Also I was a little jealous, it seemed like Mark was a pretty sick coder. Even though I consider my technical skills really strong, I found my talent in between design and technology. The closest person I guess I can put myself next to is Steve Jobs, though I know how to code on top of that.
It is really important to identify your strong side and spend most of your time doing exactly that. For me it's user experience, moving between minimalist, great visuals and deep, heavy backend.
The cool thing about watching those movies is that you literally brainwash yourself into success, just by seeing more success stories. And more than any motivation video, you prove to yourself that you can make it. You build this mindset where you're a little bit delusional. And the truth is, if you want to build a unicorn, you need to be delusional. You need to believe in yourself, and you need to know how others did it. Once you know it, you understand it isn't magic, it's a system, just steps they took. You can turn the whole process into a game you can play.
But I usually don't love watching movies. Or better to say, I love them too much, and that's exactly why I don't watch them often. When I'm watching something, I turn off from reality, and it usually eats the next few hours too. Maybe that's why seeing this one tonight hit the way it did.