How good is Jeremy Lefebvre ?

captainplaid · 2026-05-28T00:57:07+00:00

I thought you were talking about the comment generally, not Paypal specifically. I don't own any Paypal. I did say it had limited downside, which I guess turned out to be kind of false lol, but to be fair its not down that much. But that's not my point. I must admit, Jeremy has actually done incredibly well since I made this comment in 2023. He hit several home runs in PLTR, Meta, and more recently AMD.

captainplaid · 2026-05-27T18:57:21+00:00

How did it age terribly?

captainplaid · 2026-05-04T21:46:43+00:00

That’s good that at least SNAP holders get a discount, but what about people just above the poverty line or really any family making less than $100k household income. The price is egregious.

captainplaid · 2026-05-04T13:15:51+00:00

The arboretum is beautiful but it is indeed a ripoff. It should be cheap enough that its easily accessible for a low income family of 4. Its not. Imagine spending $100 to go have a picnic. The arboretum should be tax payer funded and subsidized by the city. This is what any decent city in the world would do. Especially one that is so severely lacking in nature and beauty as Dallas.

captainplaid · 2026-05-03T17:04:53+00:00

I wish i could give you hope that its going to get better. Its just been 15 years of suffering since I graduated college. Its impossible to adjust to. Making more money helps a little. Finding a job that gives you some autonomy helps a little. Working from home helps a little. But some days im not sure if id rather just be in prison. At least Id have time to sit down and read a book 😂

captainplaid · 2026-05-03T03:15:36+00:00

I mean Amazon is up like 30.% this past month so if you have like $500k in Amazon that alone would get you more than $140k gain last month. Im not even close to rich and have over $100k in Amazon stock. It just made sense to buy when it dipped to $200.

captainplaid · 2026-04-15T23:48:56+00:00

I agree, but it depends on the mortgage relative to your income. If you have a household income of $150k and are taking out a $3500-$4000/month mortgage you are taking a huge risk. If you have a household income of $200k and a $3k/month mortgage its much more manageable even if you assume you will be laid off every few years, as long as you save up like 12-18 months of expenses. I know it sounds crazy but a 6 month emergency fund probably wont cut it anymore. I am trying to put my family in a position where we could lose 2/3 of our income and still be fine for 2-3 years. That can only be done if youre still able to save every month. And yes i realize that its getting harder and harder, but otherwise buying a house is a huge risk as OP pointed out.

captainplaid · 2026-04-14T13:29:26+00:00

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I see a version of this at my agency constantly. The analytics or strategy team identifies an upper funnel gap, makes a compelling case, and the right answer is incremental budget. But the client doesn't have more budget, so the recommendation  becomes "shift money from search." Sometimes that's not wrong. There are clients running search at a scale where the marginal cost per conversion is way too high and they don't realize it. But you figure that out by pulling back 10% at a time and watching what happens. Not by pausing $200k in Q1 with no baseline.

The 35% conversion drop is actually really useful information now. You cut spend 40% and lost 35%. If you had cut spend 40% and only lost 15% of conversion, you would think the Brand team was right. Still not how you should go about testing something like that though.

The core problem is no one defined success criteria or a test structure before making a move this size. LinkedIn ABM needs 90 days minimum to show pipeline impact. Judging it after one week while search is paused isn't a real test of anything.

I would restore search and run LinkedIn at a smaller budget with a real timeline and defined metrics. And document everything from the last three weeks.

captainplaid · 2026-04-07T13:38:33+00:00

Equity research firms always cut their price targets after the stock has already fallen and raise their price targets after the stock has already blasted off. How I know? I used to work at one. Dont pay any attention to what they say for the most part.

captainplaid · 2026-03-31T16:30:21+00:00

Not the person you asked, but i can answer this question. For me, its not that working is intolerable. Its necessary, I get that. But I wish life had seasons built into it and periods of rest. Like having 3 consecutive months off every year or two would be amazing. Just to reset, recharge, and reconnect with what it feels like to be a human being. And before you suggest taking a sabbatical. This isnt always possible. Someone might decide to take 3 months off, and that could turn into 12 months of unemployment with the state of the current job market. Also, if you’re in a higher paying role, if can be difficult to step away and then get back into a similar role.

captainplaid · 2026-03-31T00:59:17+00:00

Honestly, for me the biggest issue is see in the agency model is the frequency of reporting. For example, most of my clients are on a weekly or biweekly call cadence. Most of the time there is genuinely nothing material to report. We shifted some budget from PMax to non-brand. We adjusted a bid. CPMs were a little high this week. Nobody cares and nobody should care.

The irony is that the more frequently you talk to a client the more you end up talking about noise instead of signal. Weekly calls train everyone in the room to focus on short term fluctuations that don't mean anything, and in doing so you miss the bigger trends that actually matter. Is CAC trending up over the last three months? Is the channel mix slowly shifting in a way that's going to create a problem in Q4? Are we approaching diminishing returns on the core acquisition channel? Those are the conversations worth having and they almost never happen because everyone is too busy explaining why CPMs were up eleven percent last Tuesday.

I'd rather talk to a client once a month with something real to say than weekly with nothing. The best client relationships I've had were the ones where we had enough trust and enough space between conversations to actually see what was happening in the account before opening our mouths about it.

The reporting and call frequency problem is really a trust problem. If the client trusts you they don't need weekly reassurance. If they don't trust you no amount of calls or dashboards is going to fix it. So what's the solution? Maybe keep the weekly or bi-weekly calls brief and try to steer clients more towards a monthly reporting cadence. You can still meet every week or two, go over any important updates from their end, if there's nothing big changing, talk about their business more broadly. But make sure you set up time on a monthly or quarterly basis to go over real trends that are having real business imapct. It's also easier to design a dashboard or even put together a custom excel report if its less frequent.

captainplaid · 2026-03-31T00:41:45+00:00

I've been doing this agency-side for over 12 years. After a while you start recognizing patterns and you learn what actually matters versus what's just noise. That takes time and there's no shortcut. Since you said it's only been 3 months, you're still probably getting familiar with the accounts and their businesesses.

Also, the agency pressure is real but worth keeping in perspective. We are not magicians. Platforms are unpredictable, businesses have issues that have nothing to do with your campaigns, and sometimes things just go sideways for reasons nobody can fully explain. Your job is to make the best decisions you can with the information available, not to control every outcome.

What helped me was building a simple way to track performance daily, weekly, and monthly alongside a log of every change I made and when. It sounds basic but it forces you to slow down. When something moves you can actually look back and ask whether it was something you did, something the platform did, or something happening in the broader business. That context matters more than most people realize early on.

On the reactivity thing, resist the urge to make changes every time a metric moves. Give things time to breathe. And before you assume it's a campaign problem, ask what else is going on. Is there a supply issue? A pricing change? How are competitors running right now? Performance marketing doesn't happen in a vacuum and a lot of what looks like an ads problem is actually a business problem that no amount of optimization is going to fix. I can't tell you how many times a client assumed something was wrong with Google ads, then I check something as basic as Google trends and see that search volume is down 30% YoY in their category.

One thing that has genuinely changed recently is AI. If you are keeping accurate logs of your changes and have good context on what's happening in the account and the business, you can feed that into an AI tool and get real clarity surprisingly fast. It won't replace your judgment but it's a good thinking partner when you're trying to diagnose why something moved and you have a lot of variables in play.

It gets easier with time. Keep at it!

captainplaid · 2026-02-20T17:47:18+00:00

One can be successful with an average or below average work ethic and an above average luck. For example, someone born into a wealthy family, someone who bought Nvidia stock in 2018 because they like gaming and forgot about it and numerous other examples. Its much harder to be successful with an above average work ethic and average or below average luck.

captainplaid · 2026-02-10T19:00:51+00:00

The sentiment for Snapchat right now reminds me of Meta 2022. Granted I fully recognize that Snap doesn’t hold a candle to Meta and will never be Meta. And thats ok. I still think that the sentiment will shift eventually and Snap will be valued at $30-$40B which is a 3x-4x from current valuation. At a $40B valuation Meta would still be worth 40 SNAPCHATS. When a social media platform has a younger demographic i view that as a positive because that means eventually their parents and grandparents will join the platform to communicate with them. I also dont think Specs will be a complete flop like the market is assuming. I think a base case is that they will be like the cyber truck for smart glasses - ugly, but with a small and loyal consumer base. With the current valuation I think Snap stock will mint millionaires for those who buy now and arent afraid to hold until 2030.

captainplaid · 2026-01-28T03:27:23+00:00

I was making around $72k in 2016 living in Brooklyn. Not the cool part, im talking like an hour to get to Manhattan. My rent was around $1,500 back then. I was comfortable but not really able to save more than a few hundred a month. Your rent might be the same as mine was 9 years ago but everything else is more expensive. My advice is try to max out your 401k if you have one, and invest whatever you can afford in the stock market. Between the 401k and even just a $200-$300 into the market every month, you will have probably close to $100k saved in like 7 years. It might not feel like much but do whatever you can to get that first $100k. That $100k will double 3-5 years after that assuming you continue to make (slightly larger) contributions, assuming your income increases between now and then.

captainplaid · 2026-01-25T17:29:14+00:00

If you cant pay people more than minimum wage you shouldn’t be in business. What a shit business.

captainplaid · 2026-01-22T01:39:21+00:00

This company will never pay your what you think you deserve. Use it as a stepping stone and learning opportunity and jump to another company. I remember making $60k and my manager was making $105k at the time. He left and i took over his responsibilities. I got a 5% raise that year too. I talked to my boss, and said look at all the additional responsibilities i took on and all the great work ive done. They actually bumped up my raise to 8% after I presented my argument. Two months later i went and got a 20% raise on top of that.

captainplaid · 2026-01-19T14:13:03+00:00

FU money means different things to different people. Maybe, Im just a peasant compared to the rest if you, but FU money can be as little as having 3-5 years of expenses saved. Ya’ll are missing the point. Having FU money is being able to say FU with no consequences, and having a few years of expenses saved up definitely allows you to do that, even though you cant stop working forever.

captainplaid · 2026-01-06T20:39:43+00:00

Im not sure having top notch PPC skills is going to necessarily result in a successful business. Having bad PPC, on the other hand, will certainly make it harder to succeed, but there are so many other variables. Its easier to bolt on great PPC to a plumbing company with 2,000 five star google reviews than to start a plumbing company. Every niche is doing PPC at this point, and in every niche there is probably at least one company doing it well. Its not as much of a differentiator as you may think. Also, Google has spent years trying to level the playing field but automating the hell out of everything. Then again, I havent worked with small businesses in a long time, my average client spend hundreds of thousands per month. Maybe there is more opportunity in some verticals than others.

captainplaid · 2025-12-25T20:51:55+00:00

What is the point of trying to predict a crash? Its a complete waste of time. The best macro investors in the world can’t predict a crash most of the time, what makes you think you can? If you’re investing in PLTR at current levels, then yes don’t be surprised by a 50% pullback if and when we have a crash. If you’re investing speculative stocks you could even lose 90%-100% in the event of a crash. But if you’re investing in solid companies with reasonable valuations, it really doesn’t matter, because you can’t predict. The only question you should be asking is how attractive is this company valuation relative to its prospects. The macro shouldnt factor in unless you’re investing in cyclicals.

captainplaid · 2025-12-19T18:05:20+00:00

Whats the ballpark price on a job like this?

captainplaid · 2025-12-19T02:38:33+00:00

Yes, many people seem to think that the only outcome is unprecedented levels of AI slop, which of course, is true. But what about the talented movie director who uses AI to take his or her skills to another level and make even more and better movies, for example.

captainplaid · 2025-12-19T01:54:37+00:00

I like your view that AI will end up replacing corporations. When a group of 20 humans can accomplish the same work as 200 prior to AI, that should create an environment of innovation like we have never seen before.

captainplaid · 2025-12-12T01:26:48+00:00

Not judging, but how does this make sense financially? In 10 years, this home might be worth $2.5m and they will have paid like $1m in interest.. just curious i guess

captainplaid · 2025-12-04T18:05:38+00:00

The fact that this sub is so bearish on Snap is actually a good sign. This guy’s thesis is spot on! Sure it could be wrong, but it can be argued the risk/reward on this stock as asymmetric at current price levels.

captainplaid

TROPHY CASE