Post-Pareto

Why 98-2 is the new 80-20

So I got a bunch of new subscribers lately despite not having written in almost a year. Not sure how you all came to find me but thanks, and it inspired me to write this at midnight on the night before a relatively big day for myself tomorrow.

Last time I wrote, was an article called Founder Mode, in which I talked about (I think) the mentality it takes to work for yourself, yadda yadda. I don’t think it was anything mind-blowing, but I was excited because all the new skills I had been learning were starting to coalesce into something I could actually LAUNCH.

Actually Launching. This is key.

Important to note, the last time I wrote, I was still head of analytics at a (close to) 9 figure CPG brand. But everything I was writing was about empowering the self to build stuff, have equity, do founder shit, yadda yadda. I left the company shortly after.

Fast forward 8 months, and the one of the companies I built, DealAuthor, actually got a bunch of traction and made some decent money. Another one of the things I built, ContentSquared, also actually had (a single), paying customer! I also built 1-2 other things along the way that made no money. Got 98% of the way there and couldn’t quite get over the hump to even see if I had product market fit.

So now when people ask me what I do, I don’t know. I’m a tech consultant, app-builder, analytics, retention, lifecycle, influencer-marketing, creator, editor, social media managing expert / entrepreneur?

Doesn’t really matter. Titles and labels I feel like are becoming relics of the past. A past where companies hire based on PDF resumes and a phone call, and if you string the right couple of buzz words together you finagle your way into a world of 6 figure salaries for sending a few emails a week.

All of those companies will be outcompeted away eventually, and, like the bore’s stories at a party, aren’t all that interesting to talk about.

What’s interesting are all the new companies that are rapidly forming, both AI-native, and their dichotomous cousin, IRL community events. And what’s interesting about all these new companies are that they LAUNCH. Or rather, they ship. They ship.

So I write this on the eve of launching (shipping) two new apps (at the same damn time) that have somehow reached this stage, even though I don’t really know how they (or I) got here.

One is an oral health scanner for a company I consult for, Feno Smartbrush, which scans your mouth, runs it through our in-house AI model, and spits out oral health conditions, severity level, and connects them to systemic health issues you could be at risk for like pancreatic cancer, or pneumonia.

The other is an AI body fat scanner slash calorie tracker slash AI health coach slash accountability buddy called The Proof App. A few months ago a read a tweet that asked viewers “what they did to get to 15% body fat”, and it got me thinking two things: what’s my body fat percentage, and how hard would it be to get to 15%. So I challenged a friend to compete over body fat but it turned out that all calorie tracking apps were pretty garbage, but making a ton of money. So I made one that (I think) is superior, but the main selling point is the AI body fat scanner, and the ability to compete with your friend in challenges. Because losing fat is tough to do on your own, so inviting a bunch of people to hold each other accountable seemed like a good way to increase everyone’s odds of success.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I was about 18% body fat, and got to 12% pretty quickly, and altered the new goal to 10%. But like everything else in life, its that last 2% that proves to be the most difficult.

Pareto’s Principle is also known as the 80-20 rule, which most of you have probably heard of. 80% of the value is made by 20% of the people. It holds remarkably true in many scenarios. However, I think we are entering a Post-Pareto World.

Also, sidenote: I hate how everything has become a meme, a one-liner, a catch phrase, a punchline, a idiom, or a click baity article title. Literally everything I have written has had some kind of title or such, and looking back it is so boring. Everyone talking about the same thing, converging on the same ideas, trying to be novel and reinvent the wheel that is some hive-mind half-baked concept like Post-Pareto World. But hey at least I’m self-aware. Anyways I think I will have cooler titles in the future. But what never goes out of style are sidenotes.

So I think this 80-20 rule is becoming a relic of the past like our PDF purveying ancestors we don’t really think about anymore. AI leverage has gotten to a point (like I have been writing about for 3 years now…) where anyone can do anything. Knowledge and skills are commodified to the point that insert job title here can be performed by insert ill equipped person on the surface but has work ethic and critical thinking skills here.

Another side note. Sorry. Once you break the sidenote seal (SNS - im trademarking), its hard not to go back to it. The side note here is that literally everything I have written about AI in the past 3 years still holds true. So much so that I recently felt like I could start re-releasing everything just bc. The end of knowledge, the inverted value pyramid, the front end theory (nailed that one), the (still yet to be fully played out) copyright infringement issues of AI training data, the hype cycle to S curve. It kind makes you realize we are still so early and that all these explosive AGI ASI doomer scenarios and (p)doom theories are just silly. Which of course I also wrote about.

So this 80-20 rule is out, and 98-2 is in. Why? Because all of these AI tools (which get better every second of every day by the way, you should really check them out and start building if you aren’t already), are getting better every second of every day, and you should really check them out and start building (if you haven’t already)!

You can’t just BUILD stuff though. (actually side note - you can). But what I mean is that anyone can just BUILD stuff. It’s so easy, you just talk to the computer like the autistic savant that it is (be explicit - it follows the letter of the law and never the spirit). What’s difficult is LAUNCHing something (shipping).

Here is a discussion I often have with people about vibe coding. Vibe coding gets you 98% there, and then it comes time to deploy your project out into the world. If that’s a website you made in 45 seconds, that means an hour or so buying a domain, setting up the DNS, and god forbid you have a backend with some data you need to capture. That stuff, that connection to the real world (in Crypto it’s called the Oracle Problem, back when the discussion was around what if you could make your lamp an NFT), that connection to the real world takes more time. And that more time is hard work. It’s difficult because its different than the 98% of the work that got you there.

You can’t vibe code real life.

Vibe coding is like banging a square peg through a round hole. Through sheer force of articulation and lots and lots of Wisper Flow tokens, you force your squadron of AIs (Cursor, Chat, Claude) to submit to your demands and produce the piece of software that you desire. The act of vibe coding is less vibey and almost more physical in a way. It’s brute force. I am squeezing this software out of this LLM. I am literally pounding away at it, like Michealengo chiseling David out of stone, albeit with far far less precision. And actually that is a horrible analogy. It’s like banging a square peg through a round hole.

Once you have your masterpiece, bloody and bruised, open wounds, limping, but ready to be at your service and provide Zero Marginal Cost value to all stakeholders (that’s you!), you must unleash it out into the world.

But these vibe coded frankensteins are built for the future, some sort of new open web where App Store Review is not a thing, and they dont care or know what End User License Agreements are, or why Microphone Permission descriptions are not adequate, or why App Store Screenshots must be precisely the proper amount of pixel resolution. These monsters are made to provide utility, and this draconianly crafted world of cookie banners and GDPR regulations provide just enough oxygen deprivation that only the fittest survive to make it to the summit.

There is a current adage that’s making its rounds around AI talks the past few years and that adage is that because anyone can do anything, all the value is comported to the idea now, because execution is the commodity (the AI simply does it for you!). That is, in fact, the exact opposite of reality, and it is posited perniciously by people who aren’t actually building, launching, and dare I say SHIPPING anything for themselves.

The idea that Ideas hold all the value and that Execution is now the commodity in the age of AI is utterly false. Ideas are, always have been, and will continue to be, the commodity. The value of Execution grows greater and greater each day in relation to Ideas.

The backlog of Ideas that I have for projects is immense. I’m sure most people have tons of ideas, even if many are probably chopped, and, more importantly, cooked.

Execution is the bottle neck. And it’s not because execution is harder. App Store Review was giving me pains because I never launched an iOS app before, but a zillion people have, and its easy for them, and it will be easy for me now.

So if execution is now easier, why is it still the bottleneck? Because there is MORE shipping going on all around you. That vibe coded frankenstein you are so proud of could be copied and turned around in a weekend by someone else (literally chopped and cooked). So you must execute better. Everyone has a zillion ideas, everyone has a million things shipped, but how many people really execute on that shipment. That last 2% of polish, that last UI tweak, that marketing strategy, that UX onboarding flow, that right affiliate partner, that twinkle in your frankenstein’s eye that you knew 1-2 people would recognize as goated is what wins.

So Pareto is chopped (unc, if you will). 2% is the new 20%, and honestly it probably doesn’t change your life all that much to know this information. If you were in the 20% previously, you probably realized this shift happening, and have been working hard to be one of the 2%.

I see it every day.

The ability to leverage these tools are not novelty anymore, they are table stakes. The thing that used to take you a week to do, now takes a day, and the expectations have risen accordingly.

side note - this is also subtly, but not explicitly, perhaps extraneously, or even exigent circumstancedly, or quite possibly even erroneously, a warning about the coalescion (not sure if word - its 1am) of capital that powers the world. $1m is the new $100k is soo last decade, $10m is the new $100k is the reality for the next 5 years, so plan accordingly (what percent are you anon)

If you are working hard to be in the 2%, you know what your value is, you know what execution looks like (or doesn’t), and you know that ideas are a dime a dozen. Knowledge is agnostic, anyone can do anything, build new AI native companies or start cool IRL community building ventures. But don’t just have the idea, or half-bake it, or 80% bake it, or even 98% bake it. You have to go to the end, you have re-spend 98% of your energy on that last 2%. Because that’s where all of the value resides.