All of this is fiction, even though it's true. Former Derivatives trader - Wall Street to all streets. Proud Dad, luckiest man on Earth.
New York, NY
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“When we are buying a building, the seller is the last one to know”
How one man went from fixing a leaky roof to owning the most coveted corners on Fifth Ave -
here’s the breakdown:
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Italo Mendonca retweeted
3 months ago, I sold my 1st company, Skio, for $105M cash.
Now my 2nd company, Icon, just raised $30M to launch something the world has never seen.
For $1000, we make 6 human creator ads (no AI, 100% real).
We find creators, ship products, write scripts, & edit videos.
It's risk-free:
- Full refund if you don't love your ads.
- You don't pay until you review 6 scripts.
- Unlimited human revisions.
Today, Icon introduces the world's first Agency.
We're not building a normal agency:
- We bought a $12M domain.
- We're backed by Founders Fund and OpenAI + Google DeepMind leaders.
It’s impossible to hire a creative team like ours for even $30K/mo:
- Creative Directors who've worked with $100M brands (IM8, Obvi, Ridge). They update our format library daily based on winning ads (street interviews, skits, & 20+ more).
- 12+ scriptwriters with $80M in Meta adspend.
- 200+ in-house editors who've edited 100K ads.
One more thing...
We're giving away our internal Google Drive with 1000 winning ads that have driven $100M+ in revenue.
You can make $100K copying these ads if you know what you're doing.
Want the Google Drive?
1. Retweet this post.
2. Comment "icon".
3. DM me this post’s link & I'll DM you back with the Google Drive.
[Bonus] Get 3 free human creator ads if you do the above and we end up working together.
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If you have dependable employees, you & them will be significantly happier w remote work
If your employees are not dependable, they will be slightly more dependable in-person due to shame
I think that’s the entirety of the remote work debate
Ok I've fallen for the ragebaiting and have been triggered by this so I'm going to say this:
Whether intentional or not, there's a lot of virality that comes from:
1. Pick the most ragebait moment of the conversation
2. Make a clip of that exact moment
3. Get tons of retweets and views
I can tell it's rage baiting (just like the Corgi founder clip) but here's the thing - if even one parent watches this clip and decides to neglect their kids more then the damage is done.
And yes it's hard to work at home when your kid comes back at 3 pm (or 1 pm with summer camp!) but we all make our choices.
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Someone who can sit across from another person and actually talk is ahead of 95% of corporate America.
If you have a technical skill + salesmanship you can basically live in an entirely different dimension than most people.
You’re an expert financial modeler and can talk to another human for an hour over coffee or drinks?
Then start a little finance/strategy business where you charge SMBs $2-5k/month for some scope of work. Get 2-4 clients.
There’s anywhere from $50K to $250K annual revenue for you. 90% margin since it’s just you / your systems. Maybe occasional 1099 you bring in for something.
Why would you work for a company in this case?
You don’t like “chasing” clients? Doing receivables?
Oh…
But you do like HR bs, corporate babble, performative humiliation rituals, getting fired, etc?
There’s no safety anywhere, so why aren’t you just building your own castle?
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He pulled me aside and said 'man, I want you on these calls. This is what we want'.
If you've ever worked on a deal you'll know this type of rapport and goodwill is what actually gets deals to the finish line
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this but for most sticky software
I agree with this. Stock has been hammered
There is an easy bear case for Figma. AI (tools), and the leading labs that develop these products put out new “use case” tools at what seems like a weekly cadence.
Each time a lab releases a tool aimed at solving designs and creative work, the Figma stock takes a blow.
I’m not worried about whether AI can generate an interface or a design, I know this to be true. It can.
I view this thesis from that lens. Every company, team, founder, PM, marketer, analyst, and agent can generate design and interfaces (relatively) cheaply… and so, what happens next?
If software creation goes up 10x or 100x, does Figma become less a less important tool/product? Or is there a world where Figma become the place where all of that generated product work gets made coherent?
I think the bull case boils down to how well it can capitalize on coordination, design systems, governance, approval, and institutional product memory. Figma is fighting to become the organizational control plane through which AI-generated interfaces become ready for production.
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A guy in Brazil buys the cheapest copy of a Paul Auster novel he could find.
On the last page, scrawled in pen, was a phone number and two words: “Paul Auster”.
Every year on his birthday, he calls. No one ever picks up - until
imagine hiring a young Columbia graduate student, an aspiring translator, to help write your novel for you, & it turns out to be Paul Auster!
no wonder Kosinski's early novels were well received.
(I think that Paul said that Kosinski gave his assistants outlines to fill in, so the situation wasn't entirely fraudulent. Kosinski had plenty of stories including tall tales to tell, but lacked polished English; in person he was very charismatic, it is said.)
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