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Almost 7k of you here now, so time for a quick reintro 👋
I’m David. I’ve been growing products since 2001.
Two things have changed since then:
1. What it takes to grow is completely different
2. I actually take my health seriously now
Hence the gym pic 😂 📸
Here's how my :
→ Built Facebook social games reached millions of regs and 150k DAUs
→ Co-founded Chessable, grew it to $8M ARR -> exit
→ Bootstrapped for ~20 years, no VC, small angel cheques taken 🪽🪽🪽(and written!)
→ Now running a small studio of AI products (SEOZilla, Blog2Video, HelperOne and more)
→ Grew this account from 1.5k to 7k mostly through engaging with you on replies, trying to add value, almost 0 viral threads
Growth is my thing.
But here’s the honest part:
→ Most of the playbook I figured out even 5 years ago doesn’t work anymore.
→ SEO is being eaten by AI answers.
→ Feeds reward completely different things.
→A solo founder with AI can ship in a weekend what took a team months.
Distribution today ≠ distribution in in 2010, or even in 2021.
So I’m here to keep learning in public. What’s working, what’s dead, what I’m testing across my products right now.
If you’re building and care about getting your thing in front of people, say hi 👇
I’m David. I’ve been growing products since 2001.
Two things have changed since then:
1. What it takes to grow is completely different
2. I actually take my health seriously now
Hence the gym pic 😂 📸
Here's how my :
→ Built Facebook social games reached millions of regs and 150k DAUs
→ Co-founded Chessable, grew it to $8M ARR -> exit
→ Bootstrapped for ~20 years, no VC, small angel cheques taken 🪽🪽🪽(and written!)
→ Now running a small studio of AI products (SEOZilla, Blog2Video, HelperOne and more)
→ Grew this account from 1.5k to 7k mostly through engaging with you on replies, trying to add value, almost 0 viral threads
Growth is my thing.
But here’s the honest part:
→ Most of the playbook I figured out even 5 years ago doesn’t work anymore.
→ SEO is being eaten by AI answers.
→ Feeds reward completely different things.
→A solo founder with AI can ship in a weekend what took a team months.
Distribution today ≠ distribution in in 2010, or even in 2021.
So I’m here to keep learning in public. What’s working, what’s dead, what I’m testing across my products right now.
If you’re building and care about getting your thing in front of people, say hi 👇
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- me, years ago: I need to add more features.
- the market: did you try distribution?
- me: I was focused on the product.
- the market: really?
- me: I didn't think you'd humble me this fast, or this completely.
- the market: did you try distribution?
- me: I was focused on the product.
- the market: really?
- me: I didn't think you'd humble me this fast, or this completely.
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maybe the most underrated founder skill: genuine curiosity about people.
- you build things people actually want
- you spot problems before they become crises
- you ask better questions than your competitors
- products get sharper and faster
- you build things people actually want
- you spot problems before they become crises
- you ask better questions than your competitors
- products get sharper and faster
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Five years ago, if you told me I'd be shipping real products using nothing but prompts and a browser, I would have laughed at you.
Now that's just Tuesday.
Now that's just Tuesday.
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I’m working on a side project. It’s very early days, and I already killed a big feature.
Wrote down on .md it’s for way later, after growth.
It was causing technical complications and extra token burn. It sounded cool. It may be cool. It probably was cool, but
Remember, kill your darlings.
Wrote down on .md it’s for way later, after growth.
It was causing technical complications and extra token burn. It sounded cool. It may be cool. It probably was cool, but
Remember, kill your darlings.
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translation: for the next few days don’t access the web, stick to apps on iOS. am I getting it right?
Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance.
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Age of empires II champis are coming for you 😂
EARTH’S STRONGEST STORM 🌏: Super Typhoon Champi has exploded to Category 5-equivalent strength with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, tying Super Typhoon Sinlaku as the strongest storm on Earth in 2026 by wind speed. Champi recently passed near Guam and is now churning across the western Pacific.
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What separates the best product builders from every other smart person I've met is their relationship with users. They're obsessed with behavior in a way that feels almost pathological.
Look at the average technical founder. Brilliant, but the gap in user empathy is light years.
Look at the average technical founder. Brilliant, but the gap in user empathy is light years.
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A mental model is a lens for reading a situation that cuts through noise and sharpens what to do next.
The most useful ones I keep coming back to as a founder:
Default alive. Bootstrapped Chessable to $8M ARR before the exit. When you’re not waiting on the next round, every decision gets clearer: does this get us to profit or not?
Platform rent. My Facebook games had enough daily players to fill Camp Nou twice over. On someone else’s platform, you grow on their terms and you live on their terms.
Distribution beats product. I’ve shipped great products nobody saw and average ones that flew. Now I ask “how does this reach people?” before “what should it do?”
Parallel bets. AI has pushed the cost of testing an idea close to zero, so I run several at once. Most die quietly. One pays for all of them.
One-way vs two-way doors. Most decisions are reversible, so make them fast. Save the slow thinking for hiring, equity and anything that’s hard to undo.
Compounding. 25 years of building since a football manager sim in 2001. Skills, audience and reputation all stack. The early years look slow. The later years don’t.
Inversion. Before launching anything, I ask “how does this fail?” The answer usually tells me what to fix first.
Which one would you add?
The most useful ones I keep coming back to as a founder:
Default alive. Bootstrapped Chessable to $8M ARR before the exit. When you’re not waiting on the next round, every decision gets clearer: does this get us to profit or not?
Platform rent. My Facebook games had enough daily players to fill Camp Nou twice over. On someone else’s platform, you grow on their terms and you live on their terms.
Distribution beats product. I’ve shipped great products nobody saw and average ones that flew. Now I ask “how does this reach people?” before “what should it do?”
Parallel bets. AI has pushed the cost of testing an idea close to zero, so I run several at once. Most die quietly. One pays for all of them.
One-way vs two-way doors. Most decisions are reversible, so make them fast. Save the slow thinking for hiring, equity and anything that’s hard to undo.
Compounding. 25 years of building since a football manager sim in 2001. Skills, audience and reputation all stack. The early years look slow. The later years don’t.
Inversion. Before launching anything, I ask “how does this fail?” The answer usually tells me what to fix first.
Which one would you add?
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something founders don’t really say out loud:
when a friend signs up for your product, you never know if they’re betting on the product or on you.
that’s how i felt when my best friend felipe signed up for @Seozilla_ai - so i just kept building.
9 months later he’s got:
-over a d double that in leads
- leads coming straight from chatgpt & claude
- 9.1x the impressions on Google
he's getting clients in the US while he’s in spain, the only downside is he’s now too busy to answer my whatsapp 📷
when a friend signs up for your product, you never know if they’re betting on the product or on you.
that’s how i felt when my best friend felipe signed up for @Seozilla_ai - so i just kept building.
9 months later he’s got:
-over a d double that in leads
- leads coming straight from chatgpt & claude
- 9.1x the impressions on Google
he's getting clients in the US while he’s in spain, the only downside is he’s now too busy to answer my whatsapp 📷
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Every vibe coder knows this arc:
Build it in a weekend. Ship it. Hear nothing. Quietly disappear.
My brother lived every chapter of it. Then Opus 5.5 and $60 of sales to strangers pulled him back. Now he’s a real game dev, and his whole team is Claude.
So he made a 5-minute goes through all 156 of his commit messages and roasts them.
It’s the funniest, most honest thing I’ve seen about building with AI. Inside:
• The commit he made at 1:25am on day 2 (11,000 lines… for a ring and some triangles)
• The “rate us” button that pointed at an app that doesn’t exist. For 6 months.
• The 10 weeks his ads were dead and nobody noticed. Not even him.
• What happened 3 days after Opus 5.5 dropped
• A whole game mode built in 22 minutes, hidden behind a secret tap
• Don, the AI announcer. Let him cook.
156 commits. 88 signed by Claude. Guess which ones have full sentences.
Watch it 👇
What’s the app you quietly abandoned when nobody showed up?
Build it in a weekend. Ship it. Hear nothing. Quietly disappear.
My brother lived every chapter of it. Then Opus 5.5 and $60 of sales to strangers pulled him back. Now he’s a real game dev, and his whole team is Claude.
So he made a 5-minute goes through all 156 of his commit messages and roasts them.
It’s the funniest, most honest thing I’ve seen about building with AI. Inside:
• The commit he made at 1:25am on day 2 (11,000 lines… for a ring and some triangles)
• The “rate us” button that pointed at an app that doesn’t exist. For 6 months.
• The 10 weeks his ads were dead and nobody noticed. Not even him.
• What happened 3 days after Opus 5.5 dropped
• A whole game mode built in 22 minutes, hidden behind a secret tap
• Don, the AI announcer. Let him cook.
156 commits. 88 signed by Claude. Guess which ones have full sentences.
Watch it 👇
What’s the app you quietly abandoned when nobody showed up?
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The game, if you want to try it apps.apple.com/es/app/nexus-s…
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I spent years building 20+ products across every category imaginable.
The difference between ones that grew and ones that died comes down to these 4 things:
1. Distribution was built into the product, not bolted on after.
My Facebook games filled Camp Nou twice over every day because playing meant inviting friends. The ones that died needed me to go find every single user by hand.
2. People came back without being asked.
Chessable got to $8M ARR because the product was a daily habit. Retention did the growing. If users need a reminder email to remember you exist, you have a leak, not a business.
3. Someone paid early.
20 years bootstrapped teaches you this fast. From web hosting in the 2000s to SEOZilla today, the survivors all had revenue before they had polish. The dead ones had "great feedback."
4. I rode an existing wave instead of making my own.
Facebook's platform. Online chess. AI and SEO. The winners all sat on top of something already moving. The losers needed me to convince the market it had a problem.
The difference between ones that grew and ones that died comes down to these 4 things:
1. Distribution was built into the product, not bolted on after.
My Facebook games filled Camp Nou twice over every day because playing meant inviting friends. The ones that died needed me to go find every single user by hand.
2. People came back without being asked.
Chessable got to $8M ARR because the product was a daily habit. Retention did the growing. If users need a reminder email to remember you exist, you have a leak, not a business.
3. Someone paid early.
20 years bootstrapped teaches you this fast. From web hosting in the 2000s to SEOZilla today, the survivors all had revenue before they had polish. The dead ones had "great feedback."
4. I rode an existing wave instead of making my own.
Facebook's platform. Online chess. AI and SEO. The winners all sat on top of something already moving. The losers needed me to convince the market it had a problem.
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Simple ui/ux change. Make 80% the new 100% and charging beyond that “boost/extra” mode. Solved.
Someone on the Tesla team should know this.
Someone on the Tesla team should know this.
Elon Musk explains why charging your EV to 100% on a road trip is a mistake:
On a road trip, your instinct is to fill the battery all the way up.
That's how you'd treat a gas tank.
But a battery doesn't work like a gas tank.
Charge to about 80%. Drive it down to 10% or less. Repeat.
This is just for long trips, when you want to spend as little time at the charger as possible.
Elon: "Getting from 80 to 100, it takes about as much time as getting from 0 to 80."
The reason is what's happening inside the battery.
Lithium ions travel from one side to the other, looking for a place to settle.
Think of them as cars hunting for a parking spot.
When the lot is empty, they zip right in.
As it fills up, they have to circle around, like at a packed mall.
So the closer the battery gets to full, the slower it charges.
The last few spots take the longest to find. x.com/NarutoNolimits…
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maybe some people don't actually want to build a product empire? maybe they just want to ship something people use and keep doing that?
and this obsession with "scale" just kills your taste for the work
and this obsession with "scale" just kills your taste for the work
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If you're building products, verify your assumptions before you ship around them. Assumptions are quiet saboteurs; they feel like knowledge but carry none of the weight.
Take "people want more features." I held that belief for years, building and layering, convinced complexity was value.
Imagine the reckoning when users churned anyway. Every roadmap decision came flooding back, each feature a monument to misplaced conviction.
I wanted to delete the entire git history and start over as a farmer.
I learned from the wreckage. Confirming what the problem actually is before building - that's the part I kept skipping.
Take "people want more features." I held that belief for years, building and layering, convinced complexity was value.
Imagine the reckoning when users churned anyway. Every roadmap decision came flooding back, each feature a monument to misplaced conviction.
I wanted to delete the entire git history and start over as a farmer.
I learned from the wreckage. Confirming what the problem actually is before building - that's the part I kept skipping.
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Shipping one feature is infinitely better than planning ten.
- One user talking to you is infinitely better than zero users.
- One ugly landing page live is infinitely better than a perfect one in Figma.
Sure, the full vision is the goal. But one gets you real feedback.
You're learning and iterating. Zero is still just a doc in Notion.
- One user talking to you is infinitely better than zero users.
- One ugly landing page live is infinitely better than a perfect one in Figma.
Sure, the full vision is the goal. But one gets you real feedback.
You're learning and iterating. Zero is still just a doc in Notion.
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