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Hey y’all — ICYMI I’m hosting 7 founders in Costa Rica with my buddy Tyler Denk in February.
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We’ll be working, vibing, and going deep together with structured mastermind sessions. Other details:
Everyone will have their own private room and bathroom
Private chef and food are all included
All activities are optional but included (surfing, yoga, private boat, in-house massages, etc).
Dates: Wednesday February 25th to Sunday March 1st
Cost: $10,000 (business write-off eligible).
Expect killer founders, mindset-shifting conversations, and good times.
Anyway here’s today at a glance:
Opportunity → Financial Sync Tool
Framework → The Creative Act
Tool → Parse
Trend → Mobile Apps Are Back
Quote → Understand Psychology
PS — Become a member to get access to my founder membership including an engaged community, fundraising support, fireside chats and more.
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🔗 Houck’s Picks
My favorite finds of the week.
Fundraising
Zoe Zou shares fundraising mistakes she made so you don’t have to (Link)
Growth
ICYMI
Get the AI agent certification built for founders — 50% off this month with code FOUNDER (Link)*
Ayman Al-Abdullah shares the best tip he can give first-time founders (Link)
Jai Dolwani on the startup rollercoaster (Link)
Rohit Mittal on what founders must learn before trying to sell their startup (Link)
Mert on the most important piece of advice he doesn’t hear often (Link)
💡 Opportunity: Financial Sync Tool
Making it easier to code (thanks to LLMs) means we should expect societal trends made more popular by people building software products to continue to proliferate.
That includes digital nomading.
I’ve personally been a nomad for the last year and, let me tell you, the last thing you want to be worried about while you’re on the road and managing travel logistics is your bookkeeping.
This ICP has high average complexity for payments and revenue streams, so it makes sense to offer them a more tailored product.
🧠 Framework: The Creative Act
Most of our frameworks come from folks in business, but this week it comes from the legendary music producer, Rick Rubin:
@60minutes “I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music.” Music producer Rick Rubin says he can barely play any instruments, but says... See more
His book is one of my favorite reads from the last few years because it breaks down how to do great, creative work into universal principles. And I don’t think it’s unfair to argue that building a startup inherently requires creative work, not just tactical work.
Ryan Yockey pulled out a few key insights into the infographic below:
🛠 Tool: Parse
Imagine if you could build a reusable API that could interact with and scrape data from any website on the internet in seconds.
That’s Parse.
In the world of LLMs where data is the new oil, Parse lets you dig a new well in any location you want.
Insane advantage — check it out.
📈 Trend: Mobile Apps Are Back
After the mobile gold rush (now 10 years ago, wow) we saw a stagnation in terms of the new apps published each year.
But that’s changing.
The rise of vibe coding (making it easier to create apps) and the new paradigm shift towards LLM-centric software has finally reversed the decline of new app development.
I expect we’ll see a rise of vibecoding tools for mobile specifically in 2026 (it’s already happening, I’ve seen some interesting pitches that I unfortunately can’t share).
💬 Quote: Understand Psychology
To have a business, you need to make money.
To make money, you need to solve a problem.
To solve a problem, you need to understand your customers.
To understand your customers, you need to get inside their heads.
To get inside their heads, you need to understand their psychology.
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