Mason Hale

Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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Parker just posted Rippling's new fundraising memo. It's the manifesto for compound startups and one of our initial inspirations for building Atlas. Here's a nugget that I really liked that summarizes how we feel about the competitive advantage of all-in-one startups over vertical startups (in customer support especially): "When we build corporate cards, we're not innovating on the way we issue corporate cards (through Stripe issuing or Marqeta) or the way we scan and extract metadata from receipts (which is mostly a vendor relationship for us today). We're going to win on the capabilities we have that are common to all Rippling products—the integration with the rest of Rippling and with employee data, the platform capabilities, and the common UX described above." Here's the full doc: https://lnkd.in/gYH59HVZ

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I scaled ScraperAPI from a one-man project to a 7-figure acquisition. Here are 6 tips on writing copy for a developer audience. 1) Don’t BS Devs can smell that from a mile away. Don’t know what you’re talking about? Find a technical person who does. Thinking of stretching the truth to make your product sound a little better? Forget it. 2) Call to action, but not too much Conversions happen slowly with developers. The worst thing you can do is constantly make them feel rushed. 3) Keep it clear This isn’t the time for run-on sentences—short and to the point will do. If your “why” and “how” aren’t clear after the first read, it’s game over. 4) Prioritize accuracy Whether it’s a landing page or a paid ad, you want your first impression to not just be cohesive but to give the right information. If developers see inconsistencies in your messaging further down the conversion path, consider them gone. 5) Know the lingo I’ve seen way too many dev tool ads describing products with terms developers themselves would never use. Make sure there’s a line of communication between your copywriters and your technical folks to keep the language authentic. 6) Build trust Got technical experts on your team? (If you’re building a dev tool, the answer is almost undoubtedly a “yes”). Even if it’s only a phrase, play that up. Developers want to know they’re getting something from like-minded peers who actually understand their pain points. tl;dr: 6 tips on writing copy for developers - Don't BS, avoid being too sales-y, keep it clear, prioritize accuracy, speak like a developer, build trust

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Have you ever thought about how compliance laws are a lot like design systems? I recently spoke with Joe Toscano, founder of DataGrade, and he made a fascinating comparison. Joe explained how Brad Frost's atomic design methodology took an engineering approach to design: → Creating standardized elements → Templatizing them → Scaling them across a system This led to the rise of human interface guidelines (HIGs) from tech giants like Google, Apple, and IBM. But here's where it gets really interesting: Joe argued that privacy laws and regulations are like the ultimate HIG for product design. Just like how HIGs provide rules and constraints for design systems... Compliance laws set guardrails for what we can and can't do with user data. If we design something that isn't compliant, it doesn't matter how sleek the UI is. Legal requirements become the top-level framework we have to design within. That's what got Joe into studying laws - to understand this new "design system" for building products. So next time you're cursing a lengthy legal doc or trying to make sense of GDPR... Remember, it's all just part of the atomic design of compliance. — Do you agree with the analogy of compliance laws as the ultimate design system? Why or why not? Hear more of Joe's unique perspectives on the intersection of product, privacy, and law on the latest episode of The Minimum Viable Podcast.

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The best Product folks have this insane ability to deconstruct consumer behaviors from other apps and apply it to theirs. MPL’s game design, CRED Mint’s referral flows, and Urban Company’s service descriptions are all great examples of these!

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Polls can be a cheat code for earned media, and a great way to build authority. But there are levels to this. Here's how one of the best I've seen - Capital One - does it. (And what I'd do differently to increase earned coverage). Led by Shena Ashley, PhD, Capital One's Insights Center is a masterclass in leveraging polls to create unique insights that would do incredibly well via earned syndication. Here’s what they do great: ✅ Content that sticks: Crucial issues > fleeting trends. Focusing on topics like financial stability, mobility, and entrepreneurship, it's easier to rationalize investment on topics with a longer shelf life. Their insights + stories can drive coverage for months to come. ✅ Visual storytelling: Data doesn’t have to be dry, and Capital One presents original insights through clear and eye-pleasing visuals that are easy to understand. Publishers like charts, they love colorful charts, and they LOVE colorful charts that are easy to understand. Check, check, check. ✅ Strong methodologies and extensive polling numbers: Capital One frequently involves 7k+ participants in their studies - they are not half a**ing it. Well explained methodologies are table stakes to get your polls covered, and Capital One does a great job outlining their data collection process, sample size, and research methodologies.   ✅ Easy to steal: Each report has multiple easy to take stories/soundbites, and are also written as full pieces of content, which can be taken as whole. Finally --- if I could change one thing... Add a byline. Brand publishing NEEDS a byline - no news outlet wants to cover a story that can't be credited back to a human. All in all, polls can be incredibly valuable for driving earned syndication - check out Capital One's Insights Center in comments for killer examples.

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ALERT! We recently discovered that a fraudulent website, https://createape.cfd, is impersonating Create Ape and scamming individuals with false employment offers. This is a serious issue that we are actively addressing. At Create Ape, we take online security very seriously and are working closely with Alibaba hosting to have this scam site taken down. Your safety and trust are our top priorities. If you encounter any suspicious activity or communication claiming to be from Create Ape, please verify its legitimacy by contacting us directly at [email protected]. Reporting the fraudulent site to Alibaba hosting can also help expedite its removal. For more details, check out our latest blog post: https://lnkd.in/grKCxb_Z Stay informed, stay safe, and thank you for your continued support! 🙏 #CreateApe #ScamAlert #OnlineSecurity #StaySafe #ReportScams

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