Think Week #34
YC turns 20, $10M ARR with 15 people, Cursor for Writing
Welcome to Think Week.
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TL;DR:
Read: How Y Combinator Started
Watch: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people
Vibe: 16-year-old builds “Cursor for Writing”
Think: Who should I listen to?
Do: Give yourself a break. 33% aint bad.
Read
It’s the week of March 16th, 2025.
Sunday
How Y Combinator Started
We funded the second batch in Silicon Valley. That was a last minute decision. In retrospect I think what pushed me over the edge was going to Foo Camp that fall. The density of startup people in the Bay Area was so much greater than in Boston, and the weather was so nice.
— Paul Graham
Y Combinator turned 20 this past week. The first Batch was in Cambridge, Massachusetts back in 2005. I had no idea. This is certainly a Jeopardy question most of us would get wrong. In late August 2005, I was just across the Charles River at Berklee College of Music. It’s fun to think back on your life and realize how close you were to historical moments like this.
Monday
You are not Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin isn’t even Rick Rubin in the way you think he is. Rubin was a product of a mass culture era, a time when the right gatekeeper in the right room could shape the trajectory of an entire creative industry. He had taste, for sure. But more crucially he had access. He had the ability to say yes when yes meant something: distribution was scarce, media was centralized, a record label’s executive decision could set off a chain reaction leading all the way to platinum sales.
—
What's interesting about vibe coding influencers is a lot of these guys are revered in a similar way that Rubin was. There's just not a single person who has his level of influence across the entire industry. Peter Levels is getting close.
Tuesday
From personal computing to personal software
I had this idea for an app called as Good Flicks (good reads but for netflix, hence the name) – a personal movie companion – sitting in my head for months. Despite my computer science background, building it seemed daunting. An iOS app with authentication, databases, and recommendation engines would have taken months to develop. Yet, during the past six weeks, with the explosion of AI-powered development tools, I've brought Good Flicks to life. Even with zero Swift experience, spending just an hour or two here and there, I've built a fully functional MVP.
—
I’m excited about the return of creative expression. I haven’t spent enough time considering the impact of literally anyone having the agency to build software for themselves. In the consumer space, what’s still worth paying for? Tools like REPL.it, Cursor, v0 (the shovel makers) are in the best position. For $20 a month, you now own hundreds of custom SaaS products designed just for you.
Wednesday
Vibe coding, some thoughts and predictions
If vibe coding makes software trivial to build, then the bottlenecks shift to other places: 1) consistent creativity that stays ahead of everyone else. Anyone can write a tweet, but the best creators are the ones who consistently come up with new ideas. 2) distribution and network effects, where the first vibe coded product doesn't win, but rather the first vibe coded product that hits scale that wins.
—
I’m incredibly bullish on distribution, advertising, collectives, and communities. Creators that are money-rich and time-poor are going to increasingly rely on paying their way to the top or partnering with others in order to reach a larger audience. We’re going to see more groups of designers, writers, and engineers start to pull their audiences together in order to cut through the noise.
Thursday
Make What Scares You
The best work—the work that actually matters—isn’t the thing that feels easiest. It’s the thing that makes your stomach drop. The thing you tell yourself you’re not ready for. The thing that feels too personal, too risky, too real. The truth is, we don’t just avoid the work. We avoid ourselves.
—
AI slop is creating a renaissance opportunity for artists. What's funny is people thought AI was going to kill off artists, but it's going to make their voices even more valuable. It's the mess that sets us apart from machines. The broken grammar, imperfect and improper use of everything and anything that makes us human.
Friday
AI: The Next Chapter
Computers were simple when they started. They were a screen and a keyboard, they didn’t even have a mouse. The screen was black with a green cursor called the command line. You would type commands into the computer through this command line interface which would trigger different actions. Wait a second, there's this hot new technology called ChatGPT. It has a text box, I type in commands, and it triggers different actions. This sounds familiar. Have we gone full circle?
—
Funny to think of ChatGPT as a return to the command line but it’s worth noting that the user experience isn’t that different. It’s a reminder that we’re still very early in the development of interfaces for AI tools. The graphical user interface for AI has yet to be discovered.
Saturday
How to price your work without undervaluing your worth
One time I embodied my inner gunslinger and doubled my rates before pressing send on a proposal just to see what happened. I fully expected a “thanks, but no thanks” but instead got a “sounds good, when can you start?”, and it was in this moment that all my pricing assumptions were vaporised and I realised that, in fact, it’s the Wild Wild West out there and you can charge whatever you damn well please as long as you have the skills to deliver (this is of upmost importance), the confidence to back yourself and the rationale to justify your rates if someone asks.
—
If you have the experience or know you can learn a skill fast enough to deliver, it never hurts to raise your prices to an uncomfortable number. You have to be ok with coming in too high and missing out on the opportunity.
Watch
just hit 1M subscribers on Substack and it’s due large in part to his ability to ask great questions. Sounds simple, but sometimes you don’t need to overcomplicate your content strategy.Follow trends
Talk to people in the trenches
Write about what you learned and share it
Lenny recently interviewed Loveable co-founder Anton Osika and the hour-long conversation covers a lot of ground. A lot of people don’t realize he built the open source tool GPT Engineer which showcased the ability of large language models to create applications. He was able to leverage that success and community to launch Loaveable.
Vibe
16-year old kid builds “Cursor for Writing” so he can work on his exams “more efficiently” and do more important things, like vibe.
This tool has already significantly lowered the time it takes for me to finish my high school exams, which has enabled me to work on stuff that actually matters for me like this for example. — Elliot
Not sure why he’s charging $500 a month though… 🤯
Think
You should care more about how someone thinks. We get to see LLMs think out loud, in realtime. It’s magical.
Creators that pull the curtain back a bit and let you into their though processes will earn more trust and build a more engaged audience.
Do
Finish what you start. For the next month, whatever project, article, essay, you start to work on, don’t stop until you share it with the world. Resist the urge to pick up something else that captures your attention. Whatever that new shiny thing is, just bookmark it for later.
Question who you imitate. Before you use that template from your favorite creator or copy someone’s hook, just pause.. take a moment to think.
Pay another writer. Substack just hit 5 million paid subscriptions, but we all know those numbers are top heavy. There thousand of writers who’ve never made a dime. Even if it’s just for a few months, become a paid subscriber and support a writer you admire.
Fin
Give yourself a break.
Succeeding 3 out of 9 times ain’t bad. Batting 33% could put you in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In the context of writing, it’s truly a numbers game. Just like baseball, you need to swing the bat hundreds of times to be any good. Thousands of times to be great.
Keep swinging.
— Daniel
P.S. What does vibe writing look like?
really enjoyed this one. great way to kick off my sunday, ty.
Great read Daniel!