Brecht Van Craen retweeted
Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?
homeDAO cohort 3 - applications now open
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So proud of Belgium!! From 0-2 to 3-2 by never giving up and fighting to the end!
One of the craziest matches in our football history for sure 🔥
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Brecht Van Craen retweeted
We went from 0 to 2,200 paying customers in under a year by following @ycombinator's 15 rules:
1/ Do things that don't scale. Get your first 10 customers by hand.
2/ Launch now, not when it's "ready". A mediocre product in front of real users teaches you more in a week than 6 months of polishing in the dark.
3/ Charge from day one. If nobody will pay, you don't have a startup, you have a hobby.
4/ Talk to users every single day. The roadmap you need is sitting in your customers' heads, and they'll hand it to you for free
5/ Always hunt the 90/10 solution. For almost any feature there's a way to capture 90% of the value with 10% of the effort.
6/ There are only two real jobs: write code and talk to users. Everything else (conferences, press, VC coffees, corp dev calls) is fake work.
7/ You pick your customers as much as they pick you. 10 users who love you beat 1,000 who kind of like you.
8/ Growth is an output, not a strategy. Grow before product market fit and all you're buying is churn.
9/ Do less, really well. Pick one or two metrics and judge every task against them.
10/ Know if you're default alive. Paul Graham's question: on current growth and current burn, do you reach profitability before the money runs out?
11/ Don't hire until it hurts. Headcount is not progress, it's burn. Every great startup was embarrassingly small for embarrassingly long.
12/ Momentum is the only real moat in year one. Ship something every week, even something tiny.
13/ Every great startup is badly broken at some point. The game isn't avoiding fires, it's how fast you put them out. Again. And again
14/ Ignore your competitors. Startups die of suicide, not murder. In year one, the only company that can kill yours is your own
15/ Startups rarely die from running out of money. They die because the founders fall out. Brutal honesty with your cofounder is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy
Good luck !
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In this fast paced AI driven world, we often forget that things take time. Very valuable post.
How could this be perceived as anything but a massive failure in today’s world? Would Stripe even be investable today? Which investors would ever think that only launching after two years of work and with 50 users would ever be the beginning of something gigantic?
I can’t see how anybody would be happy with this today. And yet, almost imperceptibly, Patrick and John were painstakingly laying the foundation for something that was built to last and built to grow strong and immovable like a Sequoia. How can mushroom growth rates produce anything other than mushroom longevity?
I’m not saying that real value CAN’T be built quickly. But I think it’s far more common than we like to talk about that founders work for two, three, four, seven, even fifteen years before something extremely valuable is born into the world and really takes off.
James Dyson worked on the design of his vacuum cleaner for 5 years before he got to a working prototype and 8 years before it became a commercial product.
Dylan Field worked on Figma for four years before launching a *closed* beta.
Tim Leatherman worked on his idea and prototype for 8 years before he had his first multitool design that was ready to sell.
Palmer Luckey spent about 7 years from the time he began working on VR prototypes before Oculus released the first consumer headset.
Jensen Huang started Nvidia in 1993 and it wasn’t until 4 years later in 1997 that they had their first major commercial success with the RIVA 128.
Steve Wozniak was the fastest and went from an idea for a personal computer in 1975 to the Apple II release 2 years later in 1977.
Time and again the reality is that great things take time to build. I’m not saying it doesn’t take hard work. I’m definitely not saying it doesn’t take determination and extreme focus. But it does take time. I think we try and pretend that it doesn’t take time and lift up the seeming exceptions to the rule.
Why not be honest and instead focus on the determination and extreme grit that it takes to keep building for years before any outward success arises or glory is received?
I hope we can be honest with young founders and repeat these stories again and again so that they learn to work thanklessly for years before the outward vindication comes, because that’s what it really takes.
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Brecht Van Craen retweeted
We listened. And it changed everything.
When we started weRate, we believed reviews would be the future of local experiences.
Long-form reviews.
Star ratings.
Detailed opinions.
Then 250,000 check-ins showed us something else.
People don’t want to spend minutes writing reviews after every coffee, dinner, workout, or night out.
But they love checking in.
They love logging where they’ve been.
They love collecting memories.
They love quick reactions over long reviews.
And they love earning from their everyday movement.
The signal became impossible to ignore.
So we made a decision:
Instead of forcing users into outdated review behavior…
We’re rebuilding the product around what people naturally want to do.
A much shorter loop:
Go somewhere → Check in → answer a few quick prompts → earn rewards
Less friction.
Less typing.
More fun.
More repeatable.
And while going through this process, one thing became very obvious:
weRate no longer reflects what we’re building.
We’re no longer building a review-first product.
We’re building something faster, simpler, and far more aligned with real-world behavior.
That’s why today, we’re announcing our new identity:
weRate → Lokal
The new app experience is currently being rebuilt and will roll out soon.
New brand first.
New product next.
And we think you’re going to love what’s coming.
Road to 1M check-ins starts now.
Welcome to Lokal.📍
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Brecht Van Craen retweeted
Our first official raffle is live. 🎁
We partnered with @solflare and put 5 Solflare Shields on the line.
Join with a new account using SOLFLARERATES to:
• unlock the Solflare Terry trait
• claim +1,500 bonus RATE (only 1,000 codes available)
• get your shot at winning a Solflare Shield
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Brecht Van Craen retweeted
10,000+ signups and accelerating.
Now the real part: check in, climb the boards and start stacking RATE.
If you’ve got the app but haven’t moved yet: do 1 check-in today. That’s it.
Made with AI
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If you feel like you’re behind.
If you feel like you’re losing.
If you’re not sure if it’s going to work.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
Welcome to entrepreneurship.
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For everyone who wants to claim our awesome @solflare Terry trait 👇
We’re teaming up with @solflare to reward real check-ins with real rewards.
Sign up with code SOLFLARERATES to unlock +1500 RATE + an exclusive Solflare trait.
⏳ Limited codes available.
Stack your RATE, raffles, giveaways and payouts are coming next.
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Brecht Van Craen retweeted
We’ve partnered with @weRate_Official for Seeker Season 2.
Solflare users can now claim:
~ The exclusive Solflare Terry trait
~ 1,500 bonus RATE (first 1,000 claims)
Claim with code ‘SOLFLARERATES’ from your Solflare Explore page.
⏳ Limited codes available ↓
We’re teaming up with @solflare to reward real check-ins with real rewards.
Sign up with code SOLFLARERATES to unlock +1500 RATE + an exclusive Solflare trait.
⏳ Limited codes available.
Stack your RATE, raffles, giveaways and payouts are coming next.
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