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- FASTer - Issue #190
FASTer - Issue #190
One Trick Ponies & Longevity
Carmex (1937)
Alfred Woelbing made the first batch in his kitchen to treat cold sores. The recipe was so perfect, they never changed it. 87 years later, it's still made exactly the same way.
Duracell (1924) Started making mercury batteries for military equipment. For 100 years, they've had one mission: Make batteries that last longer. That singular focus made them a household name.

Sriracha (1980) David Tran fled Vietnam with nothing but a hot sauce recipe. He never advertised. Never changed the recipe. Never raised prices. The sauce grew purely through word of mouth into a global phenomenon.
The moral of the story is, there is nothing wrong in doing one thing and doing it well. Going deep vs going wide has its merits.

Outcomes
Writing is the New Wealth
A nation that can’t give or take precise instructions shouldn’t pin its future on producing prompt engineers at scale.
“Prompt engineering” isn’t a revolution. It’s a rebrand of something far older: the art of asking better questions, framing better instructions, and writing with clarity. Call it rhetoric, logic, command, persuasion, centuries of human progress have depended on this skill. We just gave it a Silicon Valley job title.
And now it’s a national imperative. At least for those nations that care.
The Real Arms Race: Comprehension and Communication
We’re entering an age where your ability to express yourself in precise, clear, strategic language directly determines your leverage with AI. It’s not just about “using AI.” It’s about getting AI to do exactly what you want, on the first try not by asking it to help you work better but by knowing what to ask to have an enhanced outcome.
Countries, companies, and people who master language will run laps around those who don’t.
Why This Should Scare Influencer Economies
Nations that over-index on influence instead of instruction will suffer.
If your education system teaches students to “vibe” online but not write a 5-point brief, your GDP won’t scale in the AI era. The gap between content creators and concept creators will widen. And it won’t be kind to countries (or companies) that mistake audience size for intellectual depth. Read this again!
The next global elite will be good with words, not just good on camera. The most lethals ones will be good with both.
This is especially relevant for founders under 30: AI tools are available to everyone. They’re not your edge. Your edge is your ability to extract value from them better than the next person.
That means:
Learning to structure your thinking in writing.
Practicing the discipline of clear instructions.
Treating language like code: exact, iterative, elegant & logical
Because what is prompt engineering if not high-stakes copywriting for machines? The context has switched, we wrote code for machines to do tasks, then we trained machines to understand tasks, but we forgot one vital component our ability to explain said tasks to them.
This isn’t a Gen Z phenomenon. Boomers who grew up writing memos, not emojis, already have the muscle for structured thinking. The pendulum may swing back in your favor if you reengage that skill. The real opportunity is in reverse mentorship: pair clarity with context, speed with wisdom. Some of the best startups and companies will have boards that understand contextual clarity and can drive young founders to instruct properly.
Write Like the World Depends on It
The nations (and individuals) who win in the AI era won’t be the loudest. They’ll be the clearest.
Writing is the new wealth.
Clarity is the new capital.
And the ability to instruct clearly, succinctly, and strategically will shape outcomes for decades to come.
One New Thing (That you likely didn’t know)
Wheels on suitcases came after the moon landing. The high five wasn’t popularized until 1977. Ciabatta bread was created while Reagan was president
What other stuff was more recently invented? And what other obvious stuff is under our nose now?
— Sherman McCoy (@wasphyxiation)
6:10 AM • Apr 4, 2025
Boring Stuff That Scales
Looking at patterns within data - See the chart below

Imagine You're Starting a Business That Sells Software to Specific Jobs
You’re building a tool (like an app) for a specific type of business like restaurants, dentists, or gyms. That’s called Vertical SaaS: software made for one kind of business.
So the big question is:
“How much money could I make if I sold my software to everyone in that industry?”
That’s called TAM | Total Addressable Market. It's like asking,
“If EVERYONE bought my app, how big could my business be?”
There Are 2 Things That Matter:
1. How Many Businesses Are There?
Like, how many restaurants, doctors, gyms, etc.
2. How Much Can You Charge Each One Every Year?
This is called Annual Contract Value (ACV) — like saying:
I’ll charge $1,000 a year
Or maybe $10,000
Or even $100,000 if it’s a fancy business with deep pockets!
What This Chart Shows:
This chart is like a menu of opportunities. It tells you:
Which industries (restaurants, doctors, lawyers, etc.) have a lot of customers
How much money you can make depending on your price
How hard or easy it is to grow in those industries
🟢 GREEN = BIG OPPORTUNITY
(You can make a lot of money)
🔴 RED = SMALL OPPORTUNITY
(Not much room to grow)
Let’s Use an Example: Restaurants
There are 425,000 restaurants in the US.
If you charge them $1,000/year, your total possible market = $425 million
If you charge $10,000/year, it jumps to $4.2 BILLION
Sounds amazing, right?
But… restaurant owners are busy and don’t have huge budgets. So getting them to pay more might be tough. That’s why $2,500–$5,000/year is often the sweet spot.
Now Let’s Talk About “Logos” (Customers)
If your goal is to make $10 million a year, here’s how many customers you need:
If you charge $1,000/year → you need 10,000 customers (yikes!)
If you charge $10,000/year → just 1,000 customers
If you charge $100,000/year → only 100 customers!
So… selling at a higher price means you don’t need as many buyers. But selling at a high price is way harder — you need a sales team, fancy demos, maybe even steak dinners 🥩.
🥇 So What Should a New Founder Do?
Here’s the cheat sheet:
Industry | Good Price Point | Why It’s Good |
---|---|---|
Doctors | $5K–$25K | They spend on tools that save time |
Lawyers | $10K–$25K | They charge a lot, so they can pay more |
Dentists | $5K–$15K | Many of them, and they like easy tools |
Construction | $5K–$25K | Big teams, messy coordination = need help |
Restaurants | $1K–$5K | Huge market, but hard to sell expensive stuff |
How to use this data?
Find a big group of businesses (like 100,000+)
Charge them $2,500–$10,000/year
Make sure they actually need your tool and won’t cancel
That way, you can hit $10M/year with a few thousand happy customers, sound simple till you try it.
But wait there is more. Take the above data & feed it to AI
Tell The AI your:
Technical level (builder, founder, designer?)
Sales/network strengths
Interest areas (health, legal, education, etc.)
…and ask it to match you with the easiest vertical to win in, with a sample MVP roadmap.
What You Should Be Watching
More than a billion citizens. More than three thousand years of history. And yet China can seem opaque from the outside, monolithic and inscrutables. This documentary show audiences modern China from the inside, with close-up stories of everything from agriculture to the arts. This is a portrait of an ancient country that moves at high speed into the future.
Monetize your time
By investing this weekend in understanding n8n. Then have your Mind Blown, by traversing this n8n catalogue with 2,201+ workflows! → Battle-tested templates → Build, don't buy philosophy → Save countless development hours. If you still aren’t making money by Monday, its your fault.
One Last Thing
going through life with a signature i made in grade 7
— B. (@buhlesrevenge)
6:19 PM • Jun 1, 2025
A signature you made in 7th grade will still clear a million-dollar check, if you deliver value. Same goes for logos. Stop obsessing over pixel-perfect branding.
Obsess over building something so valuable that the ugliest logo or signature still cashes.
Bonus! Thought of the week
Ive likely said parts of this before, but it holds true every day of the week.
You’ll never go broke if you sell to:
Men’s lust
Women’s desire for beauty
Elderly’s health
Children’s education
Rich people’s fear of loss
Poor people’s desire to get rich quick
Parents’ instinct to protect
Lonely people craving connection
Insecure people chasing status
Bored people seeking novelty
Anxious people needing certainty
Lazy people craving convenience
Ambitious people chasing shortcuts
Spiritual people seeking meaning
Addicted people seeking dopamine hits
Understand human nature → Print money.
Ignore it → Burn money. Use the list how you see fit.
Contrarian Take:
Your $80 face serum won’t fix an empty life.
Sleep like someone who earns tomorrow.
Walk outside | sunlight > self-pity.
Find a mission | your "personal brand" is not one.
Live near people you’d bleed for | not just brunch with.
Dance ugly. Lift heavy. Stop curating.
Self-care is the floor. Building a life is the ceiling.
Most of you are stuck polishing the floor.