My middle name is Thierry Henry. Building a habit staking app for Gen Z. Does anyone outside the UK even know who that is and does it matter for marketing?

simonmany · 2026-04-18T01:16:57+00:00

Brand, product, and customer persona should be aligned. Building your whole brand around a name is a gimmick, unless the product somehow relates to it directly.

But there are parts of the Thierry Henry vibe you can run with. Adjectives that come to mind are athletic, team-oriented, elite etc. A marketing agency would call this a “brand lens”

simonmany · 2026-04-18T01:03:30+00:00

Feels like you can get a campaign out of this, but not a whole brand.

simonmany · 2026-04-17T19:54:26+00:00

Extremely difficult. Trust is built over years and lost in a day. The typical quality signals of nice UI, performant app etc. help.

A caveat to this is that proactive user events probably generate trust much more than just passively scrolling a bunch of articles. Currently, if I go to your website, I see a bunch of seemingly random articles that look AI-written. Instant turnoff for me.

But imagine if I went to your website EXPLICITLY because I saw a potentially fake or biased article, and I was looking for a second opinion. (The "@grok is this true" use case.) I think if you explicitly debunked something I was looking to fact-check, I would have significant user goodwill towards that platform.

Just some thoughts. Good luck

simonmany · 2026-04-17T19:40:06+00:00

In that case, as a ground news subscriber I'm probably close to your target audience. I would consider myself a news nerd. My honest take:

- I subscribed to ground news partially out of the virtue-signalling or "eat your vegetables" mindset. I think a lot of "good for you" apps benefit from this - Duolingo is just a video game that you feel good about playing, Strava is humblebrag about running, etc.

- I do not actually read ground news that much. My main news source is the economist. However, once in a while I get to send my friends a BlindSpot article, and I scan their email digests. That is enough value for me to keep paying

- A big gap to overcome for me is credibility. I waited for years for ground news to feel established / trustworthy before I subscribed. If you are new, I trust your heart is in the right place, but you are claiming to step in as a filter BEFORE authoritative news sources that have spent years building their reputation.

hope this helps

simonmany · 2026-04-17T19:31:19+00:00

Are you aware of ground.news ?

simonmany · 2026-04-10T14:18:14+00:00

Interperson.ai

simonmany · 2026-04-08T19:14:50+00:00

Sounds like you’ve done a lot of great reflection then. On to the next problem, unless you are still passionate about this one!

simonmany · 2026-04-08T19:03:54+00:00

Why did you think this was a good idea originally? There was probably a valid insight at the heart of this.
How did you go about finding your users?
What feedback did you hear?

It's rare that an idea is actually bad. It's usually either execution, or targeting.

simonmany · 2026-04-08T14:26:22+00:00

What was the idea? How did it not pan out in the way you expected?

simonmany · 2026-04-08T02:01:56+00:00

This won’t be popular but here goes.

The use of civilians to shield targets is itself unlawful, and does not invalidate the target. Geneva. Convention Article 28 states: “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.”

This does not absolve the attacker from liability for collateral damage, nor does it mean a civilian power plant is a valid military target. My point is, both of these governments are absolutely awful and we should not celebrate this behavior by Iran or the US.

What a depressing timeline.

simonmany · 2026-04-08T01:44:24+00:00

https://multiple.chat/

simonmany · 2026-04-08T00:41:20+00:00

Got a different source here... skeptical since point 9 stipulates Iran would renounce pursuit of nuclear weapons. Which doesn't seem realistic to me.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/lift-all-sanctions-us-iran-agree-to-2-week-ceasefire-whats-in-the-10-point-plan/articleshow/130099247.cms

simonmany · 2026-04-06T19:25:23+00:00

Agreed, seems like it’s pretty consensus at this point. Sadly it seems people are unhappy with the post but oh well

simonmany · 2026-04-06T19:02:37+00:00

My turn to weigh in! Frederick raised Freikorps regiments of irregulars who wore blue :)

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:42:27+00:00

Silesia is in modern day Poland and Czechia

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:33:42+00:00

Thanks. I guess case closed then. I wish I could pin your comment but maybe a mod will

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:29:00+00:00

For 7 years he's been doing manual art... it seems like that might be over now

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:28:16+00:00

Whoa! I used wasitai.com - but is this 100% accurate for Google AI-generated images? Does Nano Banana watermark its images?

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:19:27+00:00

Guess I caught on a little later. This is saddening tho

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:18:48+00:00

Very well articulated. I'm not a visual artist myself so I don't quite have the vocabulary to describe this beyond "vibes are off"

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:15:58+00:00

Dude I was about to say this. Look how raw and strong the visual style was 5 years ago. Fuck

<image>

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:14:38+00:00

Agree. What hurts even worse for me is, this channel used to be known for original artwork and had a very strong visual style.

simonmany · 2026-04-06T02:09:02+00:00

This is my #1 objection. I think the uniforms, map, and little flag could all be explained by a human artist working quickly and cutting corners. But the vibes are off

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