Yo legends 🙌
Latest thoughts sat on hot, delayed tube.
Waiting for perfect kills momentum.
Polish is a trap. So is planning.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is lethal.
This is for the ones who are done with waiting, overthinking, and watching others win. Most people wait for:
the perfect idea
the right timing
funding, co-founders, branding, validation…
Here’s a better framework:
Create like you're broke — because broke people don't wait.
Operate like you're dangerous — because dangerous people don’t ask permission.
👊 CREATE LIKE YOU’RE BROKE
Broke doesn’t mean bad — it means scrappy, fast, and clear on ROI.
Examples:
AI + Notion MVPs to test demand before you waste time building.
Launch with a Google Form or Typeform. Validate. Charge. Then upgrade.
No logo, no brand deck — just a working link and a clear offer.
You don’t need polish. You need proof.
⚔️ OPERATE LIKE YOU’RE DANGEROUS
Once you’re in motion, act like someone who’s already shipping.
Move like your competitors are watching.
Because they are.
Examples:
Use ChatGPT + Claude to spin up ideas, proposals, outreach, scripts.
Use AI to auto-clip video + post 10x/day on 3 channels — content gravity.
Clone yourself with voice + video AI to stay visible without burning out (New post coming on this)
Dangerous = leverage.
LIKE WHO? (4 BRAND EXAMPLES)
🧨 1. Liquid Death
Create Like You’re Broke: Water in a tallboy can. Zero innovation. 100% branding chaos.
Operate Like You’re Dangerous: Skulls, metalcore, anti-corporate tone. They marketed like a threat — and it worked.
Started as a joke. Now worth $700M+.
⚡ 2. Gymshark
Create Like You’re Broke: Started in a garage, screen-printing tees.
Operate Like You’re Dangerous: Scaled fast using influencers before it was a playbook. Built a cult, not a brand.
Grew to £1B+ valuation with zero outside funding until year 8.
🎧 3. Death Row Records (in the early 90s)
Create Like You’re Broke: DIY studio hustle.
Operate Like You’re Dangerous: Bulletproof attitude, hard branding, and narrative control.
Fear became part of the marketing.
🤖 4. Midjourney
Create Like You’re Broke: Weird Discord UI. Clunky UX.
Operate Like You’re Dangerous: Launched before it was smooth and got obsessive traction through community and creativity.
No ads. Just killer output.
👊 PLUS - ONE OF MY HEROES (BONUS)
🎬 Robert Rodriguez
✅ Create Like You’re Broke
Made his first film (El Mariachi) with $7,000 — funded by participating in clinical drug trials.
Used homemade dollies, borrowed equipment, and shot in real locations with friends and non-actors.
Didn’t wait for studio approval. Shot fast. Edited himself. Dubbed audio in his garage.
⚔️ Operate Like You’re Dangerous
Turned El Mariachi into a trilogy (Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) and launched a Hollywood career on his own terms.
Built Troublemaker Studios to retain creative and financial control.
Shoots, scores, edits, directs, and produces many of his films solo — full-stack filmmaker.
Refuses industry rules: "Creativity isn’t about resources. It’s about resourcefulness."
🔥 Why He Belongs in Your Playbook
Rodriguez proves that:
Constraints breed creativity
Speed + vision beat budget + polish
And doing the damn thing is more powerful than waiting for permission
WHAT MR DATA SAYS…
🧠 1. Constraints = Innovation
76% of high-performing teams say constraints drive more creativity, not less.
📊 Source: Adobe “State of Create” Report
Startups that begin lean and scrappy are more likely to survive past year 5 than overfunded ones.
📊 Source: CB Insights
💰 2. Overfunding Can Kill Speed
29% of failed startups cite running out of money — often due to bloated early spending before product-market fit.
📊 Source: CB Insights, Top Startup Failure Reasons
Startups that raise >$50M early are 2.4x more likely to fail than those who grow organically.
📊 Harvard Business School study, Noam Wasserman
🎯 3. Fast Shipping Wins (Unless you have investors, then needs to be managed properly)
Teams that deploy code more than once per day are 24x more likely to outperform competitors in delivery speed and quality.
📊 Source: DORA (DevOps Research & Assessment) Report
Companies that release MVPs in under 6 months see 20–40% faster user adoption.
📊 Source: Lean Startup Case Studies
🎮 4. Gamified, High-Effort UX Increases Engagement
Users who personalize or help “build” part of their experience are up to 60% more likely to return.
📊 Source: Harvard Business Review – IKEA Effect
Apps using onboarding that mimics “learn by doing” (like games) improve activation rates by up to 50%.
📊 Source: Appcues UX Benchmarks
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE… Real world examples
Making MVPs with no-code, AI, and duct tape
We built a functioning product demo over a weekend using ChatGPT, Webflow, and Notion. No devs, no backlog, no waiting. It was enough to become a live MVP1.
Replacing meetings with movement
Instead of weekly standups, we set up async voice notes and AI meeting summaries for those that are pressed for time. We shipped more in 3 weeks than we had in the previous quarter. No fluff. Just flow.
Embrace nostalgia
Team were knackered. We called an ice cream van and asked him to turn up at the office - was cheaper than pizzas. Twisters are popular. Who’d have thought?
Testing live. Learning fast. Fixing in real time
Once pushed a half-built feature live just to get user friction data — and it broke. But we got 40+ pieces of actionable feedback in 2 hours, team rebuilt it the same night, and doubled engagement within the week.
Turning chaos into leverage, and friction into growth
A failed launch exposed a massive hole in our onboarding. Instead of scrapping it, we turned that friction into a “build-your-own flow” and watched our retention go up by 38% — all because we leaned into the pain. (Ikea effect works well)
🧨 Final Thought:
Plenty of people have better ideas than you.
Plenty have more resources.
But most of them are moving slow, overthinking, and trying to look clever.
Don’t wait.
Get something real in the wild.
Make it work. Then make it better.
Thanks for scrolling and rolling.
/
Tom
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