I gave a talk this week.

It was at a founder meetup here in Da Nang (Vietnam), and I wanted to share the core of it with you because I think it's the most important thing I've learned in two and a half years of building.

Full talk is on YouTube if you want the whole thing → [link]

I want you to picture something.

Now there are two types of people in this ocean.

The first person is thrashing around trying to make their own waves. Splashing everywhere, exhausting themselves, getting nowhere.

The second person is calm. They've done this before. They're just waiting for the wave that's already coming.

For two and a half years, I was the first person.

I built Indiedex. Made no money.

I built Brandcast. Made no money.

I built TechServia. Made no money.

I built CoachMiro. Didn't even launch.

I built Pentest List. No monetisation opportunities.

5 products. $0.

I was thrashing around trying to create waves that didn't exist.

There's no other way to put it.

Unless you're building for a hobby, validation is money.

It’s not your friend saying "yeah that's a cool idea."

It’s not a waitlist with 200 signups.

And it’s not 50 likes on a tweet.

It’s Money.

When you ask someone "do you like my product idea?" you might as well ask "will you pay for it?" And if they won't, their opinion is polite but it's not validation.

These are the strategies I wish I had two years ago.

My friend Nevo David did this with Postiz, a social media scheduler.

Buffer and Hootsuite have owned that market for decades.

Nevo didn't try to reinvent it, instead he just made one part of it 10x better: he made it work with AI agents.

Four months ago he was at $21k/month. He just passed $140k/month.

Same idea as Buffer, just a different angle, with one part made dramatically better.

My friend Romàn did this with Gojiberry.

Before building any software, he ran an agency selling lead packages to clients manually.

He validated the demand, got cash flow, and used those exact clients as his first users when the product launched.

Eight months to $1M/year. Now over $3M/year.

The clients literally led him to the wave, and he just had to build the board.

This is the levelsio approach.

Take an idea, put up a landing page, slap a buy button on it.

If people pay, it's validated. If they don't, you saved yourself months of building the wrong thing.

I'd actually recommend combining this with the first two strategies.

Copy a validated idea, decide to make one part better, then slap a buy button on it before you build the whole thing.

When I finally stopped thrashing and started looking at what was already working, the risk completely shifted.

Before, the risk was: will anyone even want this?

After, with a validated idea, the risk became: can I execute on this?

And execution is entirely in your control.

That's why I had the belief when I flew to Rio de Janeiro with a backpack and no plan.

I knew people wanted an X growth tool because Tweet Hunter had already done $250k/month.

I just had to build something better. The risk was on me, not on the market.

Eight months later, SuperX hit $10k/month. Now it's at $22k/month.

With AI, everyone has a surfboard now.

Everyone can build.

But most people are still thrashing around trying to invent something that never existed.

If you want to make money, look at what's already working, copy it, make one part of it significantly better, and ride that wave.

Full talk → [link]

Question for you: what do you actually want me to cover next? More playbooks like this? More founder breakdowns? Something else entirely? Reply and tell me, I'm genuinely building this newsletter around what you want to read.

See you next Tuesday.

You've got this.

- Rob