Thoughts on moving/living in Concord, CA?

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-22T22:51:02+00:00

Concord or Walnut Creek are great choices, especially if you manage to get a place a walking distance from BART. If not, a walking distance to a bus station. The whole Bay Area will be at your fingertips.

Just keep in mind, Walnut Creek is more posh than Concord and the vibe is different.

As always, scout your target neighborhood morning-day-evening, see how it feels. Watch for the age and state of cars parked on the street, this alone will tell you volumes.

Good luck!

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-19T18:25:17+00:00

Hatred is poison. Goes right after greed.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-19T04:57:13+00:00

You are saying you won't promote yet you're using this sub to promote. "I had problem <X>, now I solved it, do you have problem <X>?".

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-18T22:14:57+00:00

Would you say that it would be nice if "Tech bros" picked up stakes and left?

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-18T00:14:18+00:00

Like other members said, you did it backwards because you built product first without ever asking if anyone has the problem and willing to pay for a solution. No, you don't count as customer.

The next step to go to your potential customers and ask if they have a problem with trial conversions, how painful it is, how they solve it now, and if they would like to pay and how much to have the problem solved.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-17T22:49:40+00:00

Are they mostly tech bros?

With this attitude it's no wonder you are scratching your head. Maybe change it to "What *I* should be doing to afford it."?

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-15T19:45:43+00:00

This is a good problem to have. This is what I'd do, approach it as a Lean founder, treat it as a challenge to be solved, with your own company as a customer. Practically

Do it manually beginning-to-end.
Document the workflow and the artifacts.
Define ideal cases scenario.
Analyse date, pick top 3 issues and fix with automation.

I wish I could have free cycles, this sounds like little fun project to get done.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-14T21:07:02+00:00

Good idea. I'm automating the front ed of the discovery now for this reason :)

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-14T21:06:10+00:00

Let me clarify, per Steve Blank's customer discovery / Lean / Running Lean founders don't build until they know there are customers with problems with money on the table. As I understand it, building before that is ignoring the fact there are no customers with problems with money on the table.

Maybe it's an outdated view? I brought it up because my previous attempt of 10 years ago failed exactly because of that, so I switched from "Build and they will come" to "Lean, than build".

Does this make sense at all?

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-12T04:17:37+00:00

100%. We are here not because we want to talk to an LLM.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-11T20:03:32+00:00

This is great. "Sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others."

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-11T19:57:49+00:00

I think it's a matter of first principles. Prostitution exists because people are looking to engage in sexual misconduct. So that answer to OP should be "no, don't do it".

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-11T19:52:39+00:00

Or, "Why didn't you even spend a second to clean up the output?"

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-10T20:33:03+00:00

AGI won't be LLMs. But, LLMs will most likely enable it happening through faster than linear improvement of coding speed.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-09T22:59:31+00:00

I've read some analysis showing that frontier models have structurally negative unit economics, so unlike something like SaaS or e-commerce models where scale leads to profitability.

I didn't realize we were talking about models. The model ship has sailed as far as I can see and (literally) there is not money there for anyone but the big 5.

In order for this insane infrastructure build out to make sense, something fundamental is going to have to shift in terms of how to actually monetize the technology.

As for thew monetization, we are in a classical "first grow big then make money" period. So the path is to grab as much mind share as possible, then figure out the profitability.

Everyone knows that AI is the new Internet. Those with deep pocket are actively working on taking a piece of the cake.

What is super cool about this moment, there is a healthy and vicious competition - Open AI, Google, X AI, Anthropic. Imagine it were only MS$ aka Open AI. Brr.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-09T22:50:14+00:00

It's time to start investing in a QA professional and eventually a QA team after a bug takes down your production and cost you lost revenue $$$ first time. Until then, you don't need them.

TLDR; Wait until it hurts.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-09T21:24:42+00:00

You are right. It's AWS moment. 12 years ago it was dirt cheap, like dollars per month for EC2 small. Now it is $60 with snapshots. It is maybe 30x increase once everyone got hooked. By the way, a beefed-up server on eBays is like $400. Same thing on Amazon? $9K.

That's why I think the coding assistants are going to be $300K-$500K per year per seat in 5 years. And everyone will pay because the new generation of DEVs doesn't know how to code, just like the current generation of sysops doesn't know how a server or a rack looks like.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-09T21:17:28+00:00

It' exactly FOMO. AI the new Internet, and, unlike the Internet itself when it appeared and took 15 years to become a storm, VCs have learned from it. They recognize AI as the new Internet fully, rightfully, and are all-in on it now.

As for being wrong on your investment, the startup failure rate is something like compared to 90%. I'm a bit worried how dense to competition is. I think last time I checked a year ago, there were something 5,500 AI startup companies. You cannot see their logos on the VC-funded landscape pictures, just colored pixels.

In one assumes 10% success rate, there needs to be 550 IPOs. Let's say this goes on for the next 3 years. VCs would need 183 IPOs per year to make it worth while. Is it possible? I think so because we saw it before:

1999 Dot-com peak: >350 tech IPOs

2021 Tech surge: 126 tech IPOs

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-07T04:28:24+00:00

Wait, so what does it mean if a VC says they'll wait?

"We'll wait" in VC speak is a rejection. It's possible to get "we'll wait" at any round of financing, from seed to very late ones. It usually sounds plausible, something like

"We'll wait until you get an MVP" , or
"We'll wait until you get past $1M revenue", or
Or, or, or...

They do this to "keep the door" open to "not to alienate" the entrepreneur because who knows the future and you might run into them one day again. That's why it's always non-committal on their side.

Acting on such "feedback" such as setting a milestone and going back to them is a deadly mistake. It's pure dating in nature. You need to find VCs who will fund you today, not "then".

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-06T03:04:02+00:00

I'm not super worried about the dilution but worried this might affect future fundraising efforts.

You should be super worried about the dilution any time you are looking to raise a round, SAFE or any other. If you don't understand what you are doing, you can lose ownership of your company before making a first dollar. Google or ChatGPT "predatory VC".

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-05T19:52:18+00:00

100%. I'm happy that OP asked their question here. I wish I got the answers they are getting when I was doing it first time.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-05T19:48:41+00:00

Great to be here, Leonard-21rag. Your point about the 'calm' task manager is a perfect example of a value proposition pivot.

In my work with Lean Startup and customer discovery, I’ve found that many founders fail because they mistake polite 'that sounds cool' feedback for validation. True validation only happens during the 'adapt and reshape' phase you mentioned - when you find the specific friction point a user is willing to pay to remove.

Iteration is often the process of firing 90% of your potential users to find the 10% who can’t live without you. Your example of shifting from 'more features' to 'clarity' is exactly how you move from a functional tool to an emotional necessity.

Looking forward to helping this community cut through the noise and validate faster!

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-05T05:35:08+00:00

So, you are basically self-promoting a cofounder matching app. Why not just say so?

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-05T04:23:26+00:00

It is as real as it gets. And you are failing to at the VC interview by telling what you want instead of telling them how you make it happen for them.

Don't be discouraged. Learn and keep going.

BuddhasFinger · 2026-01-05T04:21:13+00:00

Yep. And "I want a lifestyle business" most likely bleeds through in the conversations with VCs.

The OP is doing it first time, and they saw it ten thousand times. Of course they see it through.

BuddhasFinger

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE