• building a gamified storytelling app • vc warm intros @pollenround • alum @spc
Los Angeles, CA
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re: BeReal
when BeReal was killing it a couple years back, i got many DMs from investors i had pitched to/raised from for my first startup called one minute. it was ~identical to BeReal's mechanism (notif based photo/video submission) but from 2015.
i told them all the same thing:
"i wouldn't invest. my startup one minute died because most average consumers don't consistently have exciting moments to share every single day. and nothing tech/product wise could sustainably change the existing behavior when i tried."
its demise was not from lack of capital (raised from greylock, michael birch, and many other wonderful investors). it was entirely from the inability to preserve retention.
in the beginning, it had the same crazy rise just like BeReal. on day 1, it gained 50K+ users out of nowhere. i sucked at marketing then, but people were just clicking with the funky concept itself. it was growing on its own because when one person receives the notification, they would scream "one minute" in their class, and 10+ people would take it together.
but i wasn't sustainable. there are two types of inventions: the type that sparks and dies, and the other type that survives and thrives.
it's hard enough to catch the lightning, but you have to capture it in your bottle. only psychos like me stick with consumer social. it's not as hard as space tech ofc, yet really elusive and hard to predict.
it was hard then, it is still hard now.
for pre pmf consumer social, no VC no founder can show you the ways. none.
if anyone claims they are “consumer social gurus” tell them to go eat ass.
even the instagram founders tried building one from 0 to 1 again (artifact) but folded -they were the only free agents other than myspace tom. naval tried. marc andreessen tried long ago. the list goes on including the young super novas who garnered tens of millions in downloads in matter of weeks, folded.
there is no advisor who can teach you the ways into long term pmf - i don’t mean tactical growth material. the real dna of a new david who can take on the goliaths.
there are likely less than 10 people in the world who might even have any clues, most are still running their companies: jack dorsey, mark zuck, evan spiegel, but even if all of them were to form a company together and try there is higher chance of flopping than not.
you are the best in your world view. just observe the culture out there in the wild and shoot your shots. now is the best time in decades to build in consumer social. so we might as well try.
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ok this part of @muse is way too cool. you get a free computer in the cloud orchestrated by muse.
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when you delegate a task like "do A, and do C," a competent person would also do B to connect the dots and even cover for implied experiential expectation.
opus 5.5 started acting like that. does the extra work to make sure a feature "flows" rather than check list of to dos.
very impressive
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aged like milk
"My prediction, however, is that we’ll look back on the acquisition as a bust—much in the same way we now view News Corp.’s purchase of Myspace, AOL’s purchase of Bebo, and Excite@Home’s purchase of Blue Mountain Arts."
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Alex Kwon retweeted
When someone has <200 followers but is followed by a high ratio of tastemakers and has <50 lifetime posts every single new one of their posts should get a major boost.
I don't care if this is too specific to design twitter.
Blow. Them. Up.
Done with the iPhone Duo's folded mode, scrubbing vertically surprisingly works well and fits in the side bar with few tweaks.
p.s The simulator doesn't really do it justice here the simulator is super laggy and my Mac is running hot. For that reason, dear @Apple, you should give demo units to developers first, not just celebrities.
cc @johnternus in good faith, hoping I can try out a demo unit in some secret basement at the Singapore office.
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Done with the iPhone Duo's folded mode, scrubbing vertically surprisingly works well and fits in the side bar with few tweaks.
p.s The simulator doesn't really do it justice here the simulator is super laggy and my Mac is running hot. For that reason, dear @Apple, you should give demo units to developers first, not just celebrities.
cc @johnternus in good faith, hoping I can try out a demo unit in some secret basement at the Singapore office.
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Alex Kwon retweeted
Zuck is right - this makes a lot of sense.
Manage to your internal controls before releasing anything.
Not FOMO’ing your way to release something incomplete or dangerous is applicable in every market, including AI.
Mark Zuckerberg: “I don’t think that we need some kind of industry-wide coordination... I think that just each lab needs to take the time, and when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to make sure that you’re proceeding safely…
“we’re entering a phase where trust and alignment is actually going to be the most important next set of capabilities. I think we’re getting to a point where it may not matter that much how much better it gets at math.
“I happen to think that there’s plenty of commercial incentive to get this right.
We delayed the launch of Muse for a few months because we wanted it to be a better product for users. This was not a sacrifice on our part, but rather the right decision for the users and for Meta. I believe this approach would also be correct for other companies working on developing this technology.
“When you hear people in the industry talk about some trade-off between capabilities and getting it aligned, I just disagree with that. I believe that alignment is actually the next most important ability to master if we are going to make this system useful to many people.”
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the only way to let public start loving AI is to show them how funny and/or useful it can be.
hitting someone mid transformation really is crossing the line if you know what i mean
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it’s been #1 for over a week, it’s likely it will hold the title for the longest standing #1 spot for a while.
been a while since meta put its full muscle behind one of its new apps at corporate level.
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Alex Kwon retweeted
Meta is putting its muscle behind Muse as the AI app takes off techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/me…
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computers used to be as big as factories.
when will it go mainstream is the right lens to view VR.
whether it will go mainstream is the myopic chatter.
if it eventually gets as light as shades, it is an inevitable outcome.
i’m rather in awe for zuck’s resilience making such a comeback after VR/metaverse results than the snarky crew yapping “remember how he flopped VR?”
remember when people were laughing at zuck’s acquisition of instagram for $1B
now instagram alone makes $1B every 4 days.
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Alex Kwon retweeted
Here’s to the wanting. Here’s to the dreaming. Here’s to everyone.
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so @XCreators + @XMoney is the finest clue showing us the glimpse of what @elonmusk meant by X becoming an “everything app.”
0. build with @bot @grok
1. yap to earn with @XCreators
2. spend that earning with @XMoney
3. meet people
4. hire/apply for jobs
5. date people (not obvious yet)
6. news
7. finance
8. politics
9. sports
it covers such vast spectrum already. what did i miss?
thank you @elonmusk for investing in my pollen round.
this fund will be used to bootstrap my startup with daily caffeine. nitter.net/i/jf/cards/money/share…
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