Sent two prospecting emails out on Wednesday. By Friday I got one prospect asking me to reach out in January as they are physically moving their warehouse now (solar equipment supply company) and while they want to talk they just have no capacity. Second prospect booked an in-person meeting for Tuesday (outdoor adventure company). Hell yeah! Thank you @Ry Mac

So this came up in yesterday's VIP call with @Ry Mac . @Erick Holliday brought Reverse Engineer Anything (REA) up since there has been a lot of noise around this GitHub repo. My advice is to be careful with it. What REA is A repo that points an AI agent at any app (desktop app, Chrome extension, website) and explains how it works inside: what it calls, where it stores things, how a feature is built. Why I said be careful The first time, I ran it straight on my Mac, against Granola. That gave a package with a single maintainer full access to my computer, with my API keys sitting in the environment. Not a risk I'm taking again. The part most people miss You often don't need the tool at all. The value is the process: 1. Pick one feature you like ("how does Loom have the link ready the second I stop?") 2. Ask Claude to find the app's files on your computer and explain how that feature works 3. Ask it to show you where in the code it found that, so you know it's not guessing 4. Decide if it's worth building your own version A Chrome extension ships its code readable, so for Loom I didn't need a decomplier... plain Claude was enough. What I found: Loom cuts your recording into 4-second pieces and uploads them while you're still recording (that's why the link is ready instantly), and it quietly logs every click and page you visit, timestamped to the video. That log is exactly what you need to turn a recording into an SOP, so I built my own small recorder for my customers (screenshot below). I created this "Risks of REA" document in case you want to dig in deeper https://claude.ai/artifact/9mKjeLWoqpvSanoP4siMP5

This book by Austin Kleon comes to mind when I think about doing reverse engineering the "right" way. Just my thoughts, not legal advice. Make sure you check the license terms of anything you analyze, because doing it the "wrong" way could end up in a lawsuit. One specific line from the book: "Don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes." That's how I think about REA. Study how a feature works, not how it was typed. Loom uploading in 4-second pieces (from my last post) is an idea anyone can learn from. Loom's code is Loom's. Kleon splits it into good theft (study, credit, transform) and bad theft (skim, plagiarize, imitate). Reverse engineering done right is the first list. @Andrew Kloc for more inspiration 🙂

Sharing a call sheet I keep open during discovery calls. The questions are adapted from Jake Van Clief's discovery drill; the one-page layout is mine. The order does the work. It starts with their cost in their own words, before the tool comes up at all. Then the last real time it happened, then "who feels it when this breaks?" Money only comes up after that, and only if they've asked for help. There's a blank in step 6 for your own price. It prints on US Letter. Curious how this lines up with how you all run calls. What would you move?

Gave our company’s first sales pitch yesterday. Full data architecture rebuild, connecting disparate systems, detailed reporting in real time, local LLM layered on top, delivery of everything so they own the systems. $115k solution Prospect didn’t even flinch… “wow this is exactly what we want” Follow up meeting with the board already confirmed and on the calendar.