I Turned Off Thousands in MRR This Week
SimpleDirect Financing was my first real business - started in college, 5-6 years ago. Feels like decades.
Essay
Read essayFrom the field · Essays
Essays
Candid accounts of building, closing and rebuilding companies. Decisions, mistakes and changing beliefs, alongside essays on ownership and technological change.
George Pu
Founder of SimpleDirect, an independent Canadian AI lab.
Dubai Is Not for Everyone. Here's Who It's Actually For.
The first thing I noticed in Dubai wasn't the skyline. It was a bus.
Essay
Read essay
I'm Underperforming the S&P 500 (And Publishing It Anyway)
Seven months in. My portfolio is up 11%. The index is up 16.5%. If I'd just bought SPY and done nothing else, I'd have more money right now.
Essay
Read essay
I Pay Myself $75K Running a $500K Business
No budgeting apps. No spreadsheets with 47 categories. No "you need a budget" software syncing to my accounts.
Essay
Read essay
I Don't Trust My Own AI-Generated Code (And Neither Should You)
Honest question: If a repo is genuinely important to you, something you own, something you'd bet on鈥攄o you trust 100% AI-written code without manual review? I don't. Not yet. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm not betting my business on "maybe." Claude writes 3,000 lines of code. I feel worried when I haven't read all 3,000 lines. Ship it anyway. It works. But "it works" and "I understand it" are two different things. That gap bothers
Essay
Read essay
Free. Forever. Why Founder Reality Has No Paywall
Every essay, every series, every video here is free and will stay free. Not because I'm generous - because the course you sell today is tomorrow's free prompt, and I'd rather build something that doesn't rot.
Essay
Read essay
Introducing Changelog
Changelog has one job: make it dead simple to publish updates people actually read.
Essay
Read essay
I Wasted $24K Hiring for Experience (Here's What Actually Matters)
Hired someone for $8K/month last year because they "had experience." Great resume. Said all the right things. Confident in interviews. 3 months later: nothing shipped. Excuses. Meetings about meetings. Always "almost done." $24K and a quarter of momentum—gone. Here's what I do differently now: I hire slower. I watch what people actually do in the first 2 weeks, not what they say they'll do. And when it's not working, I end it
Essay
Read essay
The Loudest Founders Are Usually the Emptiest
Most people who call themselves founders aren't actually building anything. They're networking. Posting. Attending events. Scheduling coffee chats. Talking about building. The actual founders I know? They're hard to reach. They cancel plans. They're tired. They don't have time to be everywhere. Here's a question I ask myself now: If someone is at every event, on every panel, posting every day—when are they actually working? Ma
Essay
Read essay
I Work 20 Hours a Week Now (Revenue Went Up)
I used to judge founders who said they worked 20 hours a week. Thought they were either lying or not serious. "Must be nice" energy. I was grinding 60-70 hours. That felt like real work. Now I work 20-30 hours a week. Revenue is higher than when I was burning out. Turns out I wasn't working hard before. I was just inefficient and calling it hustle. The Hustle Culture Lie Everyone preaches it: Gary Vee: "Hustle until your h
Essay
Read essay
Head of R&D for My Own Life
Running a few things at once now. Kill some. Double down on others. Test constantly. Feels less like founder. More like head of R&D for my own life. Most advice doesn't fit anymore. The playbooks assume you're all in on one thing. Nobody writes about this version. The All-In Myth Every startup playbook says the same thing: Focus. Pick one idea. Go all in. Everything else is distraction. Paul Graham: "The biggest mistake fou
Essay
Read essay
$890,546 is My 30-Year SaaS Tax
The Spreadsheet I added up my subscriptions last month. Opened a spreadsheet. Listed every tool. Every monthly charge. Every annual plan divided by 12. $2,400. Knew it was a lot. But it felt manageable. Spread across a bunch of tools. Each one "only" $50 or $100 or $200. Then I did the math over 30 years. The Number $890,546. I stared at it for a while. That's 3 Lamborghinis. A house down payment in Toronto. Or $2.3 mil
Essay
Read essayShowing 12 of 130
Open next page