Andrew Youderian

Don’t believe in dead internet theory? Last week my post about markets went viral. Normally I’d be thrilled, except the replies were 95% bots. 1,300 wildly insightful bangers like "Dems stole election. War coming". Contrast that with this week in @ecomfuelco. 100% vetted meat humans have been sharing stories of how they sold their businesses, swapping advanced Claude tactics and organizing BF/CM support dinners. The web is fracturing. People are retreating to curated corners where their tribe hangs out, safe from the bot hordes. I hope the public sites get better. Until then, I’ll be in the corner with my meat humans. 🥩

.@theisaacmed, @NotZainAgain and Montana Knife Company on a podcast is a combo I like to see.

I'd hold off on going to Mercury books just yet. My books are straightforward and I have a finance degree and have spent 6-8 hours trying to get it dialed. Still fighting to get a number of basic things to work properly. Loads of promise. The AI assistant is great for making changes. Integration with Mercury bank is really nice. They'll get there. I'll keep you posted.

This post is exploding due to bots + politics. 10% legit people, 90% AI slop. Really hate seeing X go this way. Or maybe I'm just grumpy at getting ratioed.

When I was nine, my dad did something I still haven't fully forgiven. We lived in Idaho Falls, home of the Braves, a Pioneer League team that mattered to nobody but us. My mom would scrounge up free tickets and sneak in Twizzlers to save money on concessions. We'd sit along the third base line and my dad would point out the coach's signs for me. Same name as the big-league club, so my nine-year-old brain latched onto Atlanta and never let go. Then, in October 1991, the Braves made the World Series. Game 7. Scoreless in the seventh. And my dad sent me to bed. Brutal. They lost in the tenth. I found out the next morning. It was awful. You'd think that would have put me off the sport. It did the opposite. For a regular season game, I'll take basketball most days. But October baseball is a different sport. In most games a tense moment lasts a few seconds. Postseason baseball can stretch for minutes, one pitch at a time, everyone in the room holding their breath with the season on the line. And it's such a relational sport. In 2023 my dad, my brother and I went to the World Series (I finally forgave him). I was pulling for Arizona. My dad, it turned out, had been a covert Rangers fan for years and only confessed when he showed up at the game. We got to watch him see his team win it all in person. This year I was on the road when the Brewers won it all. My daughter, now playing softball herself, texted to ask if I'd been watching. I had. Same game, different cities, still together. The night after the final game, I'll still walk into the living room expecting to turn on the TV and settle in with the family. Then I remember it's over. It's a little sad every year. If you've never gotten into it, give next October a real look. If you already love it, you know.

Confused as to why markets rallied yesterday post election and dumping hard +1 day after. What changed?

The 2019 eCom playbook needed money for Meta. The new craftsman model needs a product people talk about and patience. The biggest discussion in @ecomfuelco in October came from @DaveStickland's write-up about eCom costs. OP quoted below, but here's his headline numbers for Popsmith since 2019: Manufacturing costs: Up 50% Paid traffic costs: Up 80% Shipping costs: Up 63% ​...and the nail in the coffin? ​​Contribution Margin: Down 95% The 2019 playbook, pour everything into Meta, has stopped working for many owners. Yes big brands are still getting built. Young guns on TikTok Shop are putting up nine-figure businesses right now. But some of the best TikTok Shop operators I know admit the channel turned unprofitable this year, and they're working out what that means. The most interesting and important question IMO is how you build something with durability. I've been championing the concept of small, durable brands for years. Craftsman brands has a better ring to it, and it's the model this shift favors. What's a Craftsman Brand? A product you actually care about and stay deeply involved in. Growth that comes with lots of word of mouth. Slower to scale, but far stickier once it's there. And lean, which is why AI is showing up at a very good moment. Brands like Edward Zimmer IV's RoadID: products inspired by Edward's passion for biking, a founder still in the details after two decades. ​Jeff Sheldon's Ugmonk: Apple-esque desk and productivity products designed by a founder who obsesses over every detail. The 2019 eCom playbook needed money for Meta. The new craftsman model needs a product people talk about and patience. If you've got a existing business, you've got built-in attention, a list and some time. But it's worth asking what these trends do to your model two or three years out. teapaw.org/i/status/2112268651961…

Summer 2002 was the greatest of my life. I got a job with Outward Bound as a logistics mule, resupplying backpacking groups with food and gear. Unsure of myself, missing home and feeling like I'd made a huge mistake I nearly quit. I learned to drive pucker-inducing mountain roads with a truck full of staff 10-15 years my senior. Also pinch-hit for instructors and lead kids out into the woods. Summited the hardest 14er in CO which I really had no business attempting. Spent countless nights learning guitar and sipping beer with amazing people. I left a different man. More confident, adventurous, and full of life. And realizing I could do a lot more than I thought. My kids have heard countless stories from that summer. This year we were in Colorado visiting friends, and I knew I had to show them. We navigated my old 4x4 roads, toured the base camp I worked from (hadn't changed) and took them up their first 14er. If you ever get the chance to take your kids back to relive pivotal moments from your life, seize the chance. They get to see you come alive. You get to share a part of your story with people you love. Driving down those mountain roads once again in my (newer) white truck, with my family in tow, was pretty special.

Coming out of retirement and back to the court. Feeling. So. Good. ...Or the #SHOPPS team made a video of (better looking) AI me to promote the new DTC/eCom cards. I've got a couple packs to give away. Want one? Roast me, the video, anything Youderian related in the comments. Best two 🔥s get a free pack, which likely unlocks even more roasting. Guessing @willroman and @bandholz will tee off here...

SaaS moving from Software as a Service -> Security as a Service.

Started playing with @Mercury bookkeeping. Pretty slick. Not the right fit for inventory based businesses but for light to medium accrual it looks promising. Going to pilot it for Q4 and move over in 2027 if all goes well. Will report back. (Disclose: Mercury has sponsored ECF events. But posting because I use them / love the idea of books closed on the 1st of the month vs 20th.)

Here's my setup for a simple, company-wide AI brain for ECF: 🔌 Google Drive + Clickup + MCP All company knowledge lives in one shared Drive folder that Claude reads live through the connector. Clickup stores tasks and SOPs. Single source of truth. 🗺️ A Root README A table-of-contents doc at the top maps what's inside folders and when to use it. Claude reads it first and goes straight to what it needs. 👉 One Pointer Instruction My Claude preferences just say "check the root README first about topics A,B,C etc," so the instruction never needs updating as the brain grows. 🔒 A Private Section A separate private folder holds sensitive stuff (financials, personal goals, team comp) with clear rules that it never shows up in shared or published work. 🔄 Automated Feeding Team call transcripts auto-dump into a Processing folder and a weekly skill turns them into summaries and decisions, so the brain never goes stale. Been really happy with it and lets me start 85% of my work sessions from Claude with full context + automation.

ECF Live, our community summit happening in Mexico in Jan, is officially sold out! And after 12 years, I'm shifting our approach. The goal has always been to gather the community, but now we're focused on making it a place where our most active members invest in each other. A few changes: Invites based on community contribution, not open registration. The first day is dedicated to connection: slow meals, curated groups, off-site adventures. The goal is to reinforce a tighter, trusted core of the community. Looking forward to planning this year with the new north star. Drop a comment if I'll see you there + so I can follow you here on X!

AI can get many projects to 85% quality level. People who can refine to get it to 95%+ are going to become wildly valuable. Who are these people? They understand UX, what's crucial and what to cut. They marry deep customer empathy with ruthless, annoying attention to detail. In short, people with a wildly high quality bar and the persistence to iterate with AI until it's met.

Meta has an MCP server. I've found it super useful, especially being newer to paid. I get to chat with Claude about high-level strategy, pull in secret sauce from @andrewfoxwell's MCP and - BOOM - campaign live and running. It's no replacement for deep experience, but it beats wading in on my own as a newb. If you haven't tried it, give it a spin.

I've always wanted to be on the road. Roadtripped across the U.S. and Mexico after college. Legit around-the-world trip at 28. Celebrated our daughter's birth by buying a camper van so we could travel with young kids. Recently wrapped up a 15 month family gap year. Thought I'd always be blessed/cursed with the travel bug. But something changed this year. This Fall I said no to 3-4 trips I otherwise would have jumped on. Why? The great routine of seeing good friends and family. Hitting PRs when workouts aren't constantly interrupted. The progress from weeks of uninterrupted time on the business. I've seen a lot of the world, and Montana is a pretty special place, that helps. Or maybe it's all just a coping mechanism for having 3 kids anchored to a public school schedule. 😅 I still love travel. Lots of trips planned for when the winter turns nasty. But in the words of the great philosophers Atmosphere: "Roam if you must, but come home when you've seen enough." It's been surprisingly good staying closer to home.

Mehtab is a good guy to have in your corner.