Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
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Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♀️ Paige’s ninth rewrite
Paige is a marketing manager who’s building a course on the side, teaching small bakeries how to find local customers.
This week, she rewrote the first lesson of her course for the ninth time.
Nobody has seen it but her.
Every rewrite feels like progress, because the lesson really is a little better each time.
But she can only fix the mistakes she can see.
A bakery owner would spot the ones she can’t.
🧩 Her struggle:
She keeps the lesson to herself, so nobody who could spot what’s missing ever sees it.
Scrolling on her phone after work, she clicks on a video that tells the real story of a founder
who also put out a first version that was not finished,
and later sold his company to Microsoft for $26.2 billion.
It took him thirteen years to get there.
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💼 The website nobody understood
Reid Hoffman shipped a website that did almost nothing, on purpose.
You could list where you’d worked and connect to people you knew, and that was more or less it.
No jobs, no feed, no messaging as anybody would recognize it now.
The year was 2003 and the website was LinkedIn.
Plenty of people who saw it didn’t understand what it was for.
A website where you type in your own résumé and then look at other people’s isn’t useful on its own.
It only becomes useful once lots of people have joined.
At launch it had almost nobody.
Get this — Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion.
Reid has a famous line about launching early.
People have repeated it so often that it has almost stopped meaning anything.
That’s a pity, because it’s precise.
“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
And he adds a warning that people usually leave out.
Embarrassed doesn’t mean careless.
It means unfinished, not broken.
The first LinkedIn did the one thing it promised: it let you list where you’d worked and connect to people you knew.
It just didn’t do very much.
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Embarrassing First Version
Reid launched LinkedIn with no jobs, no feed, and no real messaging,
and it grew into a company Microsoft bought for $26.2 billion.
This tactic is called The Embarrassing First Version.
He didn’t ship something broken.
He shipped something that did one thing properly and almost nothing else,
and then let the people using it say what came next.
So you stop editing in private, where the only person reading it is you.
Real people will show you what’s missing within a week.
AI can build the first version in a weekend, so there’s even less reason to polish it in private.
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🛠️ Paige’s turn
Back to Paige, and the first lesson of her bakery course that she has rewritten nine times without showing anyone.
That night, she runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and gives it the lesson as it is now.
Her AI sidekick puts it plainly:
Your lesson already does one thing properly,
so send it this week to the two bakery owners you know will be honest, and ask them what’s missing.
The next morning, she emails the lesson to the two bakery owners she knows will be honest.
She doesn’t change a word first.
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🌅 Six weeks later
Paige has sent out four lessons, one a week.
Eleven bakery owners are working through them,
and they tell her what’s missing before she writes the next one.
Whatever you’ve been polishing alone probably has something missing that only someone else can see.
Launch the first version of your work while it still embarrasses you.
That’s it, my fellow renegades!
Yours ‘helping you borrow the shortcuts from people who already made it’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below finds the smallest honest version of what you are polishing, and the exact question to ask the people who see it.
🧰 What you’ll need
What you’ve been working on privately, and how long it has been private
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. the first lesson of my course on finding local customers for small bakeries, rewritten nine times since FebruaryWhat you keep telling yourself it still needs, and the one thing it already does completely
- e.g. a better opening and more examples, but the part on getting a bakery listed on local maps is finishedWho could see it this week, realistically
- e.g. about 30 people on my list, and two bakery owners who would be honest
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my course files, my notes, or my email list, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume owners of small bakeries who want more customers from their own neighborhood.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- Unfinished is allowed. Broken is not. Every version you propose must do the one thing it promises, completely.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
What I have been working on privately, and how long it has been private:
{e.g. the first lesson of my course on finding local customers for small bakeries, rewritten nine times since February}
What I keep telling myself it still needs, and the one thing it already does completely:
{e.g. a better opening and more examples, but the part on getting a bakery listed on local maps is finished}
Who could see it this week, realistically:
{e.g. about 30 people on my list, and two bakery owners who would be honest}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. The one complete thing — what is genuinely finished, stated as a promise I could make without lying.
2. The honest version — the smallest thing I could put in front of people this week that keeps that promise and nothing more.
3. What I say about the gaps — one or two sentences that name what is missing, without apologizing for it.
4. The question to ask — the single question to put to the people who see it, phrased so the answer is useful rather than polite.
5. What I would have polished for nothing — which items on my "still needs" list nobody has asked for and might never.
Then tell me the day this week I should send it, and to whom.