Hey, Juan here. I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life building digital products. And I’m now convinced the biggest opportunities aren’t purely digital at all. Let’s dive in. 🧠 From the Lab The internet is getting weird. AI-generated articles are everywhere. Photos are fake. Sora and Meta are churning out AI videos. It’s a huge hall of mirrors. How do you know what’s real? Kevin Rose, relaunching the old social news site Digg, is obsessing over this. He calls it the “verification problem”....
26 days ago • 2 min read
Contrarian opinion: taking time off during a burnout is useless Last week I felt a huge burnout. Probably the biggest one in a year. And I was very close to letting go, shutting down the laptop and going on holidays. Luckily I didn't. Most people tend to need "breaks" every once in a while. Weekends completely off the grid. 1 or 2 week trips. An entire month off per year. At the same time, most people on the day to day tend to say out loud: "I just need a break". Or "I can't wait for the...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
How a founder lost $85K by delegating PMF They say people fall in love with their own ideas and forget about considering a real problem someone might have. YC people like Sam Altman and Paul Graham would tell you to "talk to your users". But there's a huge misconception about talking to your users. Picture this ambitious guy in his late 30s. Perfect age to start a business. Has experience. Been crafting skills. Already senior in multiple professional ways. And probably well connected. So he...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Founder Memo A weekly tale from a founder Hey, I took a break from this newsletter to figure out how to keep going. I renamed it to "Founder Memo". The word "memo" is often used for businesses. It's like a "record" businesses use to communicate ideas, insights or visions to the rest of the organization. But memo actually comes from memorandum. To me, a memo is a reminder. Something I'm writing to myself. Or to others who might find useful. So I'm re-launching as Founder Memo. Every...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
The Co-Founder Memo A product co-founder in your inbox. Happy Sunday! Today: From the Lab: On taking the lead From the Trenches: The never-ending ai agent From the Chair: On mentors From the Feed: Cool podcasts! Let's go! 🧠 From the Lab A group of friends got together for dinner. 2 of them would take care of cooking for everyone. But one of the two was in a really bad mood after a bad week. They had different menus to cook, but none of the two felt very confident about one specific meal. They...
3 months ago • 4 min read
The Co-Founder Memo A product co-founder in your inbox. Happy Sunday! Today: From the Lab: On warming up From the Trenches: The 3 daily tasks for every founder From the Chair: Everyone gets coaching wrong From the Feed: Podcasts and books I'm devouring Let's go! 🧠 From the Lab I've been non stop thinking about the importance of warming up, and the impact not doing so has (and viceversa). I'm currently training really heavily for climbing. My current routine is 4x per week (2 boulder + 2...
3 months ago • 5 min read
The Co-Founder Memo A product co-founder in your inbox. Happy Sunday! Today: From the Lab: Shipping is addictive and AI doesn't help From the Trenches: AI go to market is a must From the Chair: How (not) to be a visionary founder From the Feed: Rethinking content consumption Let's go! 🧠 From the Lab There's a common saying in the world of entrepreneurship: People fall in love too quickly with their solution and forget about users real problems. While this is true in most cases and it's a...
3 months ago • 6 min read
The Co-Founder Memo A product co-founder in your inbox. Happy Monday! This time a bit later than usual, but Juan here from The Co-Founder Memo as always. Today: From the Lab: The SaaS strategy of leveraging on the dev community From the Trenches: How to talk about the future of a business From the Chair: Being a tired founder From the Feed: Matthew McConaughey's Greenlights Let's go! 🧠 From the Lab The SaaS strategy of leveraging on the dev community Jason Lemkin shared this online: He wrote...
4 months ago • 4 min read
The Co-Founder Memo #003 A product co-founder in your inbox. Happy Sunday! Juan here from The Co-Founder Memo. Today: From the Lab: What being good at "product" really means From the Trenches: The AI skills every tech person needs From the Chair: Cold outreach in 2025 From the Feed: Top music to laser focus Let's go! 🧠 From the Lab What being good at "product" really means Last Sunday I shared about an internal workshop we ran at Jams. These past days we started working on many of the tasks...
4 months ago • 5 min read
