Guides
Operator teardowns from the companies I run myself, plus founder playbooks built from real data.
Operator Systems
AI 10 min read
What 200+ AI Engineers Named the Thing I Already Run
In early 2026, engineers from OpenAI, Anthropic, IBM, and Google DeepMind independently described the same discipline: harness engineering — everything around the model that makes an agent reliable. I run five AI-native companies on it with zero hired employees. This is the teardown: the 5 artifacts, the principles, and why the harness is built to be deleted.
Open guideAI 12 min read
The Architecture Teardown
I run a multi-product portfolio company (GameTape, Sena, Precis, TrueStandard, Gavel) with zero employees. This is the actual operating system: the build order, the five primitives that make agents reliable, and the one thing each company replaced that would normally need a team. Architecture, not prompts.
Open guideAI 11 min read
The Locked-Context Audit
The models are smart enough. The bottleneck is the company-specific context locked in your senior people's heads. Score your company on 9 questions, then get the teardown: the closed loop, the 5 building blocks, the roles a system replaced, and what it ships, across a portfolio run with zero employees (cofounders + agents).
Open guideAI 14 min read
10 Patterns From Running 5 AI-Native Companies on Agents
I run five AI-native companies on agents with zero hired employees. These are the ten agentic-engineering hacks that actually hold up in production. Each one I run myself, and each is backed by a builder from the AI Engineer stage who landed on the same pattern independently.
Open guideAI 13 min read
People, Agents, and Context — From an Operator Who Runs Five Companies on It
Everyone says 'AI-native'; almost nobody means it. The real bar: people manage agents, agents read and write to the company, and the company gets smarter over time. This is the linear teardown of the three layers — people, agents, context — plus the two live workflows that turn the system into speed-to-signal, from an operator who runs five AI-native companies with zero hired employees.
Open guideAI 12 min read
How Mid-Market Companies Choose the Right Workflow to Make AI-Native
Five live operator guides show how to build an AI-native system. None tells you where to aim it. This is the selection layer: the three vectors (industry × function × company size), the frequency × value grid, and the exact rubric I score a workflow with before I build it — drawn from running five AI-native companies with zero hired employees.
Open guideAI 13 min read
The Demand Map — 10 Questions Mined From 26,000 Comments, Answered by an Operator
I mined ~26,000 comments across five AI channels and ranked what people in the trenches actually ask. The catch: they're builders, not buyers — but their loudest frustrations (shipping, cost, security, maintenance) are exactly what stalls AI inside mid-market companies, seen from the other side of the table. This is the demand map: the 10 questions that dominate, the four that kill the deal, and how I answer each one across five companies I run with zero hired employees.
Open guideAI 12 min read
The Business Model Behind Five Companies, Run With Zero Hired Employees
Everyone's calling "service-as-a-software" the 2026 model: work that ships like a service but runs on software instead of a team. I'm not forecasting it — I've operated five companies this way for two years with zero hired employees. This is the business model from inside it: the three ways to sell work, why the services model breaks, the five companies as five services delivered as software, the four layers it runs on, and what changes to the unit economics when you stop pricing human time — corroborated against 22,319 comments from the AI-native channels I cache and track.
Open guideFounder Playbooks
Business 18 min read
Patterns from 100 Founder Stories
We analyzed 143 videos from Starter Story, My First Million, and Greg Isenberg to extract what actually works: business models, revenue milestones, and the strategies founders use to build $100K+ side businesses.
Open guideBusiness 15 min read
The 2025 Playbook
We analyzed 100+ videos from 3 top AI creators to extract what actually works: service offerings that sell, pricing models, tool stacks, and client acquisition strategies.
Open guideCareer 18 min read
Insights from 200+ Expert Interviews
We analyzed 200+ interviews on Lenny's Podcast to identify the skills that top product leaders, founders, and executives say matter most as AI transforms every industry.
Open guideStartup 20 min read
14 Strategies from 50 Founders
We watched 50 founder interviews on Starter Story and extracted exactly how they got their early users. No theory. Just what worked.
Open guideAI 20 min read
Claude vs GPT vs Gemini: What YC Partners Recommend
We analyzed 47 Y Combinator videos featuring Andrej Karpathy, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and other AI leaders to extract practical guidance on which models to use and when.
Open guideAI 18 min read
Build Apps Without Writing Code
We analyzed 25 videos from Greg Isenberg to extract the vibe coding philosophy: tools that work, shipping strategies, and how non-technical founders are building apps faster than developers.
Open guideBusiness 16 min read
The Side Project Flipper Playbook
We analyzed 18 videos from Greg Isenberg on the philosophy of building and flipping startups fast: ship in days, validate quickly, and sell while momentum is high.
Open guideMarketing 14 min read
Get Cited by ChatGPT & Perplexity
Get your brand cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. We analyzed 8 videos from Greg Isenberg on the new frontier of search: Generative Engine Optimization.
Open guideStartup 18 min read
From Zero to 1,000 Users
We analyzed 49 micro-SaaS founder interviews from Starter Story and extracted the marketing playbooks that actually work. No theory. Just proven tactics from $10K-$400K/month founders.
Open guideStartup 16 min read
Pre-Sell Before You Build
Stop building apps nobody wants. We analyzed 49 micro-SaaS founders from Starter Story to extract how they validated ideas before writing code. The frameworks that reduce startup risk to near zero.
Open guideProduct 22 min read
Lessons from 66 Lenny's Podcast Episodes
We analyzed 66 episodes from Lenny's Podcast to extract 31 frameworks, 12 rules, and 25 principles from the world's top product leaders.
Open guideLeadership 20 min read
19 Frameworks from 67 Expert Interviews
We analyzed 67 expert interviews on Lenny's Podcast to extract 19 leadership frameworks, 7 rules, and 20 principles for founders and leaders.
Open guideGrowth 22 min read
35 Frameworks from Top Growth Leaders
We analyzed 67 episodes from Lenny's Podcast to extract 35 growth frameworks, 20 rules, and 27 principles from elite practitioners like Elena Verna, Sean Ellis, and Sarah Tavel.
Open guideAI 20 min read
Lessons from 49 Expert Interviews
We analyzed 49 episodes from Lenny's Podcast and 3,686 comments to extract practical frameworks for deploying AI agents in business. From SaaStr's 20-agent sales team to Intercom's Fin reaching $100M ARR.
Open guideMarketing 18 min read
Get ChatGPT to Recommend Your Product
Webflow sees 6x higher conversion from LLM traffic. We analyzed Lenny's Podcast episodes with top SEO experts and 3,686 comments to build the definitive AEO playbook for product teams.
Open guideAI 20 min read
What 100 a16z Videos and 823 Comments Reveal
We analyzed 100 videos from Andreessen Horowitz and 823 viewer comments to map which jobs AI will displace, what new roles are emerging, and the economic math most people get wrong.
Open guideBusiness 25 min read
Build a $1M One-Person Business
We analyzed 115 founder interviews from Starter Story and My First Million to extract the systems, habits, and frameworks solopreneurs use to build $1M+ businesses alone.
Open guideBusiness 25 min read
The Inflection Points That Actually Matter
We analyzed 100+ founder interviews from Starter Story and My First Million to extract the inflection points, frameworks, and decisions that separate $10K businesses from $1M ones.
Open guideAI 22 min read
From Wrapper to Moat
We analyzed 89 videos from Starter Story and Y Combinator to extract what separates successful AI products from GPT wrappers. Moat strategies, pricing, and distribution — all backed by real founder data.
Open guideBusiness 25 min read
Decision Frameworks from 200+ Interviews
We analyzed 200+ founder interviews from My First Million and Y Combinator to extract the mental models, decision frameworks, and thinking tools top founders use to navigate uncertainty, evaluate risk, and build lasting companies.
Open guideBusiness 22 min read
Build, Launch, and Monetize a Mobile App
We analyzed 47 indie developer interviews on Starter Story to extract the exact playbooks for building, launching, and monetizing mobile apps as a solo developer. From $12K/month vibe-coded apps to $250K/month one-feature products, here is what actually works.
Open guideBusiness 22 min read
Niches, Multiples, and Business Models That Actually Work
We scraped 986 startups from TrustMRR with verified revenue through Stripe and RevenueCat. $11.6M in total MRR. 320 founders trying to sell. Here is what the data says about which niches, business models, and pricing strategies actually work.
Open guideMarketing 20 min read
Case Studies and Playbooks from 10+ Founders Who Replaced Paid Ads with Free Tools
We analyzed 10+ founder interviews from Starter Story to extract how they use free tools to drive traffic and revenue. SiteGPT built 50 free tools and gets 50K clicks/month from Google — with zero paid marketing. Here are 6 proven strategies.
Open guideStartup 20 min read
Data from 208 Founder Interviews Across 4 Channels
We analyzed 208 founder interviews across StarterStory, TheBrettWay, Steven Cravotta, and Superwall to track how many projects founders ship before hitting $10K/month. 35 founders shared explicit failure counts. The patterns are not what motivational content tells you.
Open guideMarketing 18 min read
Every Cold Email Tactic That Generated Revenue
We analyzed 200+ founder interviews across StarterStory, TheBrettWay, Steven Cravotta, and Superwall to extract every cold email tactic that actually generated revenue. From Will Cannon's $1M ARR template to Stanley AI's email-as-product-demo approach to Hunter Dickinson's peer group play that scaled to $800M with no marketing team. Eight founders. Eight different approaches. All the numbers.
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