Writing
Things I have learned building software.
- 17 min readessayGrowthStartups
How to write headlines that get clicked: what 234 Paul Graham essays show
Paul Graham's titles break most headline advice. The ones that start with "How to" are 10% of his essays and 30% of his 20 most upvoted on Hacker News.
- 15 min readessayGrowthStartups
How to get content ideas people are already searching for
Most pages get no search traffic because nobody asked the question they answer. Paul Graham's method for startup ideas fixes this for content too.
- 17 min readessayGrowthAI transformation
How to get cited by ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews
When Google shows an AI summary, users click a result half as often. What gets a page quoted instead, what the research measured, and what I got wrong on my own site.
- 20 min readessayStartupsEngineering
The best Paul Graham startup essays, and how I apply them as an engineer
Eight Paul Graham startup essays that changed how a software engineer turned founder works, with how each one shows up in AISynq, InstinctGTM and an AI-native build.
- 14 min readessayAI transformationEngineering
How to become an AI-native software engineer without getting slower
A randomised trial found experienced developers were 19% slower with AI while believing they were 20% faster. This is what closes that gap, and the workflow that makes the speed real.
- 6 min readessayAI transformationOperations
Why AI transformation fails after the demo
The demo is the easy part. Most AI programmes stall in the gap between a working prototype and a system people rely on every day.
- 5 min readframeworkAI transformationProduct
Fix the process before you automate it
Automating a broken workflow just gives you a faster broken workflow. The cheapest improvement is usually removing a step, not adding a model.
- 5 min readnoteStartupsProduct
What founders should validate before building
Most early products don't fail because the code was wrong. They fail because the founder validated the wrong thing, or nothing at all.