Short Update
A Short one. Goodbye SF
Quick Updates
Had my final demo day for The Residency last Thursday.
App update: No real exponential growth just some steady revenue. Anywhere from $1k-$2k per day with some days hitting $10k if a video goes viral.
Two clones have popped up for my color analysis app, I know the founders of both lol. My first reaction was anger, but that quickly subsided. This is all part of the game.
If people aren't trying to copy you then it usually means you have the craziest technical or distribution moat in the world (Amazon) or you simply just don't have something people want.
Peter Thiel says competition is for losers, but I can't deny it's very strong signal of value in the market.
The AI beauty space is huge and is only going to get bigger. There's enough for everyone to eat so not tripping too much.
The real question is whether or not color analysis is simply a fad or a trend that is here to stay. I'm preparing for both in a way.
I'm almost certain some of my ops read this newsletter so I'm hesitant in sharing certain details like revenue, and operational plays I'm currently running. If you really want to know though the details you can DM me.
🔮 Plans for the future
Continue to scale UGC and performance marketing.
Currently working on another beauty app that isn't as big as the color analysis trend but still has a lot of potential.
Experiment with increasing LTV of customers by making the app recurring instead of a one-time purchase.
I started learning and implementing paid ads for both Facebook and Google ads but it's very hard to tell if it's even profitable because attribution for mobile apps is pretty tough so trying to figure that out.
📚 Things I Consumed
Movie: Blackberry, at one point Blackberry owned 45% of the US phone market. This entertaining movie depicts the rise and fall of the giant. => 9/10.
Book: Almost done reading: Sam Walton's Made in America. It's crazy how much Jeff Bezos's principles stem from this man. I'd say roughly 60%+.
Fiction: Started listening to Three-Body Problem on Audible.
💭 On My Mind
I'm just optimizing this funnel for the app. I'm not really creating anything new or working on something I'm excited about or would use myself.
I’ve been at a solid 6/10 in terms of happiness for the past 4 weeks.
In 1844, Soren Kierkegaard wrote of anxiety as being the 'dizziness of freedom', the dizzying effect of looking into the boundlessness of one's own possibilities.
There are about a dozen things I can do every day. All equally good to invest in. This is causing a ton of anxiety for me. What projects to work on? What books should I read? What skills should I acquire?
Some days I literally don’t get anything done, and run around in circles.
It’s not the worst problem to have in the world. Without anxiety, there would be no possibility and therefore no capacity to grow and develop as a human being.
Personal
Headed back to NYC in 3 days. Planning on staying there for a month until I head off to Southeast Asia in June to nomad for a couple of months.
It was real SF. I will be back.