“19 y/o founder.”
First line of the bio. Before what they’re building. Before anything they’ve done. Age as achievement.
I see fifty bios a week that lead with age. Or “Ex-Google.” Or “3x founder.” Or “Stanford dropout.” Credentials as personality. Pedigree as product-market fit.
In recent weeks, I saw three founders shipped identical AI sales tools. Same GPT wrapper. Same features. Same pricing. One got seven hundred thousand views on their launch tweet. Raised a pre-seed off that thread. The other two got nothing.
This is what AI did to building: when everyone can build, nobody cares that you built.
So founders optimize for the only thing left that feels hard: getting noticed. The $100K launch video. The choreographed Product Hunt. The personal brand. All chasing the same dream: that one viral moment that takes you from $200M to $2B overnight.
They tell themselves distribution is everything now. Building is commoditized, so audience becomes the moat. Get enough views and your X followers become customers. Sometimes it even works. For a month. Then reality hits: attention doesn’t compound. Retention does.
And yet they keep chasing virality. Some kid’s tweet blows up and suddenly they see Tier 1 VCs fighting for the deal. Never mind twelve customers. Never mind 70% churn. The screenshot says “fastest growing” and that’s enough.
VCs are always watching. Every launch, every thread, every humble brag. Get enough views and you’ll get investor DMs. Optimize for those DMs and you’ll get funded.
You’ll also die. Just with more money.
I learned this the hard way. Joined a startup because they’d raised $60 million. Tier-one VCs. Perfect pedigree. Press loved us. Eighteen months later, dead. Funding wasn’t product-market fit. Just a longer runway to nowhere.
While you’re crafting the perfect launch tweet, support tickets pile up. While you’re updating your bio with “Backed by [Famous Fund],” customers churn. While you’re performing success, someone boring is building it.
The best founder I’ve met recently builds (redacted) infrastructure. In his thirties. No fanfare. Three companies you use daily would break without him. His customer references tell me directly: “Don’t let him sell.”
Real retention doesn’t screenshot well. Infrastructure doesn’t trend. Boring doesn’t go viral.
But boring doesn’t care about your age. Your customers don’t check your bio when your servers crash. They check if you answer support tickets.
Stop optimizing for my inbox. Start optimizing for theirs.
Signed,
Unc
"But boring doesn’t care about your age. Your customers don’t check your bio when your servers crash. They check if you answer support tickets."
such a great quote.
No business was built on one and dones
I think it all started with the paper “attention is all you need”.
I would say; retention is all you need. Own the moment and grow it forward.