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.

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!

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.

Breadcrumbs for Boomers

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.