_{Day 97/100}

Hey—It's Tim.

Yesterday, I spent four hours tweaking a feature no one's even seen yet.

Why? Because I love to break things.

(And, frankly, because Google's constantly breaking our ankles with these algo jukes. If we're not running full sprint, we're already toast.)

Move fast. Break everything. Good.

Remember "Move fast and break things"?

It started with Facebook. Sure, Zuck isn't exactly topping the likability charts right now, but his original point was bang‑on: you do not make progress gently.

And it's not just Facebook.

• Uber smashed every taxi law they met, then sent a push‑notification saying, "$5 off your next ride."

• Airbnb broke housing markets and the word “host.”

• Figma shipped multiplayer design while Adobe was still mailing you CD‑ROMs.

Pattern? They shipped first, apologised later, and the apology page got more backlinks than the launch page.

If nothing breaks, nobody’s using it.

When something inevitably goes wrong (and trust me, it will), celebrate. You're getting feedback - real, loud, immediate feedback. The kind no focus group or guru can ever replicate.

We, at Penfriend, haven’t shipped anything in a few weeks. AND IT PAINS ME.
New things are coming, I promise.

Three unspoken laws of motion.

Ship ugly.

Beauty is refactorable. Momentum isn’t. Push the half‑painted wall live; finish the mural after users start taking selfies in front of it.
 

Crash reports > dashboards.

A bug log is a love letter. Silence means indifference; errors mean someone cared enough to click.
 

This meeting could have been a fist fight.

I hate meetings. I hate time tracking. I would rather just have a goal and work on it as I need to. Bring the deadline closer. Get to work.

Google is coming for us (hard)

Yesterday's newsletter laid it bare: Big G doesn't give a flying 301 about publishers.

AI Overviews chew your copy, spit out a candy‑coloured answer box, and leave you fighting for crumbs.

So what now? We get slipperier.

Penfriend's next north star is a sudded‑up backyard slip‑and‑slide of first‑person experience.

No gatekeeping.
No Google‑bait fluff.
Speak your story once, and watch it snap into the right heading, schema, and snippet before the algorithm can yoink it.

That's the build sprint this week. If sliding head‑first into frictionless "expert content" sounds fun, hit reply. I'll have a beta link (and a few bugs) waiting for you by Friday.

Quick hits for the week

• Record one Loom demo before you finish the feature. Users point out the confusing bits faster than QA ever will.

• Set a 48‑hour timer on that “launch checklist.” Anything still unchecked when the alarm rings becomes post‑launch todo.

• Forward the next angry support ticket to the whole team. Nothing motivates like a caps‑lock rant about a 404.
  
  

I want to hear it's fucked. I want to know what's busted.

Because then I get to fix it.

That's how Penfriend moves. That's how anything worth a damn gets built.

Now go break something.

✌️ Tim "I'm fast as fuck boiiiiiiiiiiiiii" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. The open rate leaderboard is close.
One email to me with your favourite quotes could swing it hard in your favour.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.