Cezar Grigore.

I’m a father. I’m a builder. I enjoy learning things, I’m passionate about education, I want to change the world, I’m a believer in people and humanity, I believe everyone should get a fair chance, and I want to be better every day.

I failed a lot. I spent my first 10 years building startups that didn’t get anywhere. I did YC in 2016 at 23. I thought I’d conquered the world and that it would all be a smooth ride from then on. I watched my peers grow businesses into the tens of billions. I failed, and I was depressed for a couple of years.

I grew up in Romania in the 90s. It was a very poor country. I came from a normal Romanian family, which by Western standards would have been a very poor family.

We eventually managed to bootstrap two businesses to $4m in combined revenue. It finally feels like I’ve built something that succeeded, even if in a modest way. And now I feel like I can go back to trying to build bigger things, things that can have a real impact on the world.

I’m doing too much. I’m trying too many things. It’s not what anyone recommends, but it’s me. I love building stuff I’m passionate about. And I’m finally working on two projects that I, personally, am truly passionate about. I think it’s the first time that’s happened in my 15 years of entrepreneurship.

This is my personal space, where I write things down for myself. If you find any of this stuff useful too, it would fill my heart with joy.

01Thoughts

Thoughts

  1. Note

    I really think people aren't ready yet for the AI that does it for you. And I don't think the AI is ready to do it for you either.

    A lot of companies are going all in on this right now. Meta with Muse, Instinct, everyone. The pitch is the same: I'll book you the right hotel, I'll find you the right experience, I'll buy you the right clothes. A proper assistant that just does it. Yeah, sure, there's a first mover advantage if you manage to capture that. And sure, some of it works really well even today. Finding a plane ticket is simple stuff. But when it fails, the failure mode is so annoying. It's my money, it's the wrong ticket, it's an expensive mistake. I'm just not sure most people want that in their lives yet.

    I think they want something else. There's a reason the smartphone got so big and is still so big. People are visual. They want to see things before they commit. They want to explore. I don't think "I'll do it for you" is what people are ready for today. It'll work great for a small percentage of people. I'm just not sure that's where you start.

    And your life isn't just yours. It's shared. With your partner, with your friends, with your family. The flat, the car, the mortgage, the pet. Finding a restaurant for Saturday, finding a cool place to go in October. That's what your daily life actually is. It's not someone booking things for you in the background. It's a lot of small decisions, and most of them you make together with other people.

    I think you start by getting people to save the stuff they care about. It's the easiest thing to ask of someone, you understand them better, and you build memory. The technology needs that to get to real understanding, and we're not there. Think about it. Meta knows more about you than anyone. You open Instagram and sure, you get some good recommendations. But you still scroll through ten reels before you find one you actually want to double down on.

    So yeah. It's tricky.

  2. Note

    Someone sent us feedback last week and I couldn't work out what they meant. I pasted it into ChatGPT, went back and forth a few times, and there it was: a good idea, buried in a sentence I'd almost skipped past.

    That's backwards. I had a conversation about their feedback with a machine, when the person who wrote it was right there. The form just had no way to ask them anything.

    A feedback form should be able to ask a follow-up. It should know what we're already planning and what other people have asked for, and be able to say: do you mean this, or this? Would that fix it? Almost nobody can write a good feature request. Almost everyone can answer three questions about the thing they're trying to describe.

    Feedback forms have been suggestion boxes for thirty years because listening properly didn't scale. It does now.

All thoughtsLong thoughts and notes, newest first.

02Muse

Muse

Most AI tools are built for work. Muse is for the other part of your life. A trip you’re planning, a house you’re dreaming about, a marathon you’ve talked yourself into. Each one gets a space, and everything you save lands where it belongs.

Send it a reel, a screenshot, a link, a half-formed thought. Then ask it anything. It keeps the context, so you never have to explain yourself twice.

MuseAI for your life, not your work. Free on iOS.

03Scrolio

Scrolio

You’re going to scroll anyway. Scrolio is an attempt to make those five minutes worth something. Short true stories built around what you’re curious about. Read one in a minute, go deeper when you want more, leave with something worth repeating at dinner.

It’s the app I wanted on my own phone: the pull of a feed, pointed at things that are actually interesting.

ScrolioThe most interesting five minutes of your day. Free on iOS.

04Social Cat

Social Cat

Social Cat connects brands with small creators on Instagram and TikTok. The idea is simple. A creator with ten thousand followers who actually listen can do more for a brand than a celebrity with ten million, at a fraction of the cost.

Brands post campaigns, creators apply, content gets made and licensed, all in one place. It’s where most of what we know about building a company comes from.

Social CatInfluencer marketing for brands, without the agency.

05Clip

Clip

Clip is Social Cat’s sibling for video. Brands need a steady supply of ads that feel like a person made them, not an agency, and creators who can do that well are rarer than you’d think. Clip vets them hard, then matches them with brands who need what they make.

Clear pricing, no agency layer, and a bar for quality that keeps most applicants out.

ClipVetted creators making video ads for brands.