Today we're launching MagicOS. And we've come to the conclusion that designers are NOT getting replaced. most of the industry moved to the same answer this year: give the agent its own canvas, let it run, hand you the output. we made a different bet: the canvas should be yours and the agent is your collaborator. that’s MagicOS. most AI design tools are a linear conversation: prompt, generate, iterate, repeat. a hundred prompts in, you might have a great final design, but the reasoning, rejected directions, and inspiration that got you there are buried in a chat log nobody will ever scroll back through. MagicOS is a persistent, spatial canvas. Your PRD, inspiration images, design system, variations, rejected directions, final picks - all of it lives together, all in one place, instead of stacked on top of itself and lost. it’s voice-first. talk to it in real time and watch work land directly on the canvas as you speak. it’s also multiplayer. your whole team works on the same canvas together. and it still runs on your design system and components because none of this matters if the output doesn’t look like your actual product. three months ago, this was internal only at Magic Patterns, my co-founder's weekend project. it’s now live for everyone. Design everything, everywhere, all at once.

we were profitable when we raised our Series A. a lot of people asked us: why raise more? why not seedstrap all the way through? we realized big companies signing large contracts feel more assured when there are more than two people behind the product. our enterprise customers kept asking us: "how big is your team?" and i was simultaneously the procurement contact, the IT contact, and the salesperson. my co-founder was shipping. we had found the ceiling of what two people can do - the surface area had outgrown us. I couldn't find time to write code anymore. what used to be just discovery calls had turned into full-time account management and sales. it was only after the round that we brought in new faces to own different functions. we're still pretty lean, but now we move like a unit.

we played around with grok bot and a couple of other personal assistants, but none of the use cases are that crazy. two automations that are live: 1. check if there's a new invoice every morning and email the receipts 2. if someone is moved to certain categories in one of our CRM sequences, add them to an email list kind of interesting how we've had zero motivation to leverage all these tools for personal use.

paul graham said "find 10 users who love you." but he never defined love. i think he kept it intuitive on purpose, sort of open-ended for founders to figure out how to make users fall deeply in love with their product in different ways. my definition of user love is they pay you, and they use you. to verify this, ask for something that costs them something: 1. can we get 30 mins on your calendar for our next release? 2. here's a refundable deposit into the private beta, are you in? 3. can you name three people in your role we should talk to? if you're not getting an instant "yes" something's not clicking. figure that out, fix it, and repeat this exercise. this loop will take you to pmf.

things worth every penny: - a dumbphone (my flip phone has almost replaced my iphone) - a good microphone (everyone on a call with me is happy) - semi-frequent laptop upgrade (esp if you're on it 12+ hrs a day) - a big green egg (cooked tri-tip for the whole team during offsite) - a nice bike (i've been using mine for years now) - sun bum sunscreen sticks (one on the desk, one in my bag) - birkenstock bostons (have two pairs, would buy a third) ik the last two make me sound like a SoCal guy but since i moved back to san diego for a while, i'm not fighting it.

nearly 80% of usage across most prototyping tools, including ours, is users clicking pre-suggested prompt pills instead of typing their own idea. try typing something personalized instead. you'd be surprised what $5 in tokens can build.

today marks the 4th anniversary of our getting into yc - applied with an idea we thought would be "the next whatsapp" - got into w23 with roughly $70 in MRR - our partner said: "this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard" - tanked our demo day - raised only $120k while many batchmates raised $2m+ - took 8 pivots to find pmf - $263 in monthly revenue in our first month with @magicpatterns - took a year+ to reach $10k mrr - hit $1m ARR over the next 7 months (profitable) with two people - raised our series A - got a proper office - hired people - started closing more enterprise deals - worked with ramp, granola, doordash + many more interesting logos - built a ~20 person team across two offices tl;dr: getting accepted into yc changed my life! also made us realize "just don’t die" is more than generic startup wisdom that's passed around because it sounds cool.

I wrote down five rules after our sixth pivot (we did eight total) 1. be passionate enough that you'd post about it on social media 2. don't assume a business model without knowing the market exists 3. think big 4. love the ideal customer 5. don't choose an idea you wouldn't want to talk about with 10 people