A memo for Kim
Kim, you should be launching a new fake-door test every single day.
Not weekly. Not when an idea is ready. Every day. Use AI for the landing page, the ad, the copy, the photos, the sign-up flow. The marginal cost of trying a new product is now roughly zero. Behave accordingly.
01 / Why daily, not weekly
Weekly is a learning rate of 52. Daily is 365. Same year, seven times the signal.
A fake-door test costs almost nothing now. The only meaningful input is the speed at which you generate, run, and read them. If you ship one a week, you get 52 reads a year. If you ship one a day, you get 365. That is not a marginal improvement. That is a different company.
Daily shipping is also a forcing function on decisiveness. When you have until Friday, you polish. When you have until 6pm, you choose. The ideas you reject teach you almost as much as the ones you launch. Polish kills both signals.
02 / What a fake-door test is
A door with nothing behind it. Yet.
A fake-door test is a landing page for a product that does not exist. A clear photo, a price, a buy button, and a sign-up form. People who click are told the product is coming soon and asked to leave an email or a deposit. The whole point is that you learn what people actually want by watching what they actually click.
You do not need the product. You do not need the supplier. You need a page, a price, and a thousand visitors. If they convert, you build. If they do not, you learned in 90 minutes what a year of focus groups would not tell you.
03 / The cost collapse
What used to take a week now takes a coffee.
Landing page
Before: 2 days, 1 designer
Now: 12 min, 1 prompt
Product photo
Before: 1 day, $400 shoot
Now: 3 min, 1 model
Ad creative
Before: 1 day, $250
Now: 8 min, 4 variants
Copy
Before: Half a day, 1 writer
Now: 5 min, redrafted ten times
Sign-up flow
Before: 1 day, 1 engineer
Now: 20 min, no code
Analytics wiring
Before: Half a day
Now: Built in, free
The throttle on your team used to be production cost. It is now decision cost. The bottleneck is no longer making the page. The bottleneck is choosing which page to make. That is a problem of will, not of resources.
04 / What Patrick Collison would say
Be impatient. The most prolific people are.
“Be impatient. Established habits and systems are surprisingly malleable, and the people you might be intimidated by are usually no smarter than you. Do not give up on the ambitious thing you privately think you can do. The world is more solvable than it appears.”
“One of the largest determinants of how much one person can accomplish is the absolute level of velocity at which they operate. Spend a lot of time figuring out which things are important, and then move as quickly as possible.”
“Few people are truly ambitious. Even fewer act on it. If you are going to spend the years anyway, you may as well aim higher than is reasonable.”
“The Collison installation. When Stripe was a few people, signing up a new merchant meant Patrick or John literally walking to the customer's office, opening their laptop, and integrating Stripe themselves while they watched. Door to door: about 20 minutes. That is what shipping looks like.”
“The world responds to people who do things. It does not respond to people who study things, or plan things, or have meetings about things. Velocity is a strategy.”
Kim, the people you respect at Stripe, at Anthropic, at Anduril, at Ramp: they do not move at the pace of your industry. They move at the pace of the smartest internal critic on their team. Match that critic. Then beat it.
05 / Thirty fake doors, ready to ship
A month of doors. Pick one. Open it by sundown.
None of these need to exist before launch. Each can be live in 90 minutes with a price, a photo, and a button.
- Day 01
$48 reusable popcorn buckets
Movie night, no shame. Pre-orders if 250 sign up.
- Day 02
AI pet portraits printed on linen
Upload one photo. Three style options. Ships in a tube.
- Day 03
A weighted weighted blanket
30 kg. For people who already own the 7 kg one and still can't sleep.
- Day 04
Single-serving olive oil
10 ml glass vials. For travel, for restaurants, for people who care.
- Day 05
AI-fitted vintage Levi's
Send measurements. We source the exact pair from 47 vintage stores.
- Day 06
Decaf espresso, ranked
A monthly box of the three best decafs of the month. With tasting notes.
- Day 07
Off-grid kettle, gas-powered
Boil water on a balcony during a typhoon. $89.
- Day 08
A pillow that reads to you
Bone conduction, sleep-only audiobooks, one-button.
- Day 09
AI-mixed perfume from a photo
Upload a place. We make the scent of that place. 30 ml.
- Day 10
Linen workout pants
Yoga, jiu-jitsu, walking out the door. No spandex anywhere.
- Day 11
A second laundry hamper, on purpose
One for clothes that smell fine. One for clothes that don't.
- Day 12
Cordless desk lamp, 14-hour battery
Move the lamp, not the room. $129.
- Day 13
AI menu translator card
Hand it to your waiter in Tokyo. They scan, you eat what you wanted.
- Day 14
Pre-tied silk hair scarves
Six knots, ready to wear. For people who can't tie a knot.
- Day 15
Replacement watch straps, daily-rotation
31 straps a month, one per day. Subscription.
- Day 16
Travel-size ceramic knife
Cut fruit on a plane. Cabin-legal because it's not metal.
- Day 17
A coffee table book of one photo
Choose any photo. We print a 200-page book of just that photo. $180.
- Day 18
A cashmere t-shirt for sleeping
Sleep in something nicer than you wear during the day.
- Day 19
AI-generated thank-you cards
Tell it what they did. It writes a card. Letterpressed. Mailed.
- Day 20
Single-use sponge subscription
A new kitchen sponge every Monday. Compostable. $7 a month.
- Day 21
Pocket dehumidifier
For wallets, drawers, cameras. Recharges in the sun.
- Day 22
Curated 'first home' kit
Everything a 22-year-old needs in one box. Knife, pot, plate, bowl, kettle.
- Day 23
AI tailor for shirts
Send three photos. Get a shirt that fits. No measuring tape.
- Day 24
A real silver ice cube
Reusable, infinitely. Cools a whisky in 20 seconds. $42 each.
- Day 25
Beeswax dental floss in glass
Refillable. The string is from Vermont. The jar is forever.
- Day 26
AI-personalized vitamin pouches
Daily pouch with your name. Based on a blood test you sent in.
- Day 27
Hot-water bottle, but elegant
Cashmere cover, leather strap. For your back, for your bed, for your guests.
- Day 28
Linen napkin subscription
Twelve napkins a quarter. Different color each time. Use, wash, repeat.
- Day 29
AI grocery list from a photo of your fridge
Open the fridge. Take a photo. Get the list. Optional delivery.
- Day 30
A daily candle
Burns for exactly 24 hours. One a day. A new scent every Sunday.
06 / The asymmetry
Twenty-nine of thirty
will flop. The one that hits
pays for the next hundred.
30
Doors opened in a month. The cost of all thirty is a rounding error against one good ad campaign.
29
Will quietly disappoint. Each one teaches you something a brief never could.
1
Will outperform everything you have shipped this year. You will not have predicted which one.
This is the entire game. You are not picking winners. You are buying lottery tickets at a price so low that the math only works if you are buying every day. Stop trying to be right. Start trying to be fast.
07 / The ask
So, Kim.
What are you going to ship today?
Not this week. Not after the next sync. Today. By the time you finish reading this sentence, your competitors have shipped something half as good and twice as fast. Catch up by sundown.