Open TikTok right now and try to find a single video that isn't selling you something. A political identity. A digital product. A lifestyle. A personal brand. A course. An affiliate link. A substack. There is always a funnel. It's next to impossible.
The latest daily vlog:
youtu.be/JM8Ig4f0E50
If you predict a catastrophe and you're wrong, nobody circles back to check.
If you predict things will work out and they don't, that follows you around forever.
That asymmetry alone explains what I call Competitive Pessimism.
www.joanwestenberg.com/optimism-is...
hey, I'm going to go pick up some sushi anyone want anything
I spent a decade checking my follower count before I brushed my teeth. Comparing myself to Zuckerberg at night. Reading YC essays on the bus trying to crack the code.
I've come to call this The Strive.
I don't do it anymore.
Here's what I do instead:
www.joanwestenberg.com/why-i-quit-...
The average knowledge worker switches apps hundreds of times a day.
And the output = a simulation of collective engagement with very little else...
youtu.be/ffuasiv-Dq0...
Studio Self is my life's work. I'm a solo operator. 6 years deep.
Strategy, brand, and creative for tech companies, AI labs, and VCs who need to be heard...
www.thisisstudioself.com/
Four tiers means you need to explain why each one exists. I have never seen a SaaS company explain the difference between “Pro” and “Business” in one sentence without using the word “advanced.” If you can’t do it either, that’s your answer.
www.selfonomics.com/p/why-solop...
Day 3 of challenging myself to do a video every day for 30 days...
I've been running a solo business since 2020. No employees. No office beyond the one filled with cat hair and comic books.
youtu.be/3yPrVu-QC2Q
"We lose money on every transaction but we'll make it up in volume" sounds like a joke.
It described the actual strategy of multiple billion-dollar startups from the last decade.
VC math requires billion-or-bust. That produces some very strange companies.
www.selfonomics.com/p/the-vc-fu...
Generational missed opportunity here tbh
The passive income movement's actual product was the dream of not working. The customers were people desperate enough to pay for it. It was a distributed, socially acceptable MLM that had incorporated in Delaware and was running Facebook ads.
youtu.be/b3dGNa8V9EE...
New video: AI detection, witch hunts, Alexandre Dumas, and why I will never participate in crowdsourced career destruction based on broken tools and vibes...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTe...
The instinct to build a pricing menu comes from the same place as the instinct to add features before launch. It ~feels like diligence. I think it's mostly procrastination.
Why solopreneurs need to pick one number:
www.selfonomics.com/p/why-solop...
If software is a thing you build, then vibe coding changes everything. Anyone can build. We have democratized building. Congratulations to building.
But software is mostly a thing people use, and getting people to use things is not a building problem.
www.joanwestenberg.com/the-hacker-...
The AI-based AI detection tools are just playing an eternal // infernal game of whackamole with this model and that model and the next model.
Snake, meet tail.
You're going to get along swimmingly.
www.joanwestenberg.com/the-ai-writ...
every generation thinks they're the smartest group of people to ever live. Yet here we are, inventing apps to remind us to drink water and stand up sometimes
Things that weren't on my 2026 bingo card:
1. Worrying about the moral alignment of my smart toaster
Every time a YC startup claims they're working on connecting people, what they really mean is creating new ways for us to avoid talking to each other in real life
The passive income movement was a fantasy about not having to give a shit. This is a terrible foundation for pretty much anything.
www.joanwestenberg.com/the-passive...
staring into the void. the void has a newsletter. the void wants me to subscribe for $8/month to access the full void. the first three paragraphs of the void are free. i have read the free void. i need more void
most life hacks are secretly just: eat well, write things down, and don't plan your entire existence around your lowest dopamine days.
every man i have ever known has gone through a phase where he reads ONE book about stoicism and begins referring to his feelings as “inputs”
“I question everything” said the person who has never once questioned whether the thing they just read on Substack might be wrong...
the genre of “man goes to live in forest, writes 80,000 words about why you should also live in forest” has never been more crowded
Never underestimate what a millennial will do for a tote bag
Why does every true crime podcast end with justice not being served and a promo code for hello fresh (dw I know why)
Every year April Fool's Day reveals that roughly 70% of the people in tech are walking around carrying the unshakeable belief that they could do a tight 5 at the Comedy Store. They cannot. They can barely do a tight 5 in a product review.
america has the best marketing and the worst product of any country I have ever studied
“we’re disrupting X” means we found a cheaper way to do X that externalises all the costs onto someone who can’t afford a lawyer
jeff bezos built a rocket because it is the most expensive possible way to not have to talk to anyone