Billy
BitClout's growth hack: scrape Twitter and pre-fund influencer accounts
Shaan marvels at BitClout's aggressive growth design: they scraped Twitter profiles without permission, listed everyone's coins, raised $100M from top investors, and pre-loaded influencers' accounts with money (his had $55K) claimable only by tweeting the platform out.
“They're aggressive because They went and scraped Twitter and they put all of our profiles on their website and said, come buy their coin without anyone's permission. That took a level of aggression and sort of like willing to operate in the gray that most people wouldn't really have. And then the smart thing was they said, well, how do we make this network really valuable? Well, if we get really valuable people on it, how do we get really valuable people on it?”
Framework
Build an audience, ask for nothing, then watch doors open in every city
Shaan explains why Sam's tour works: be a genuinely interesting person doing interesting things, build an audience while asking for nothing in return for a year, and the accumulated goodwill makes it shockingly easy to meet anyone.
“It's like, A, be an interesting person who does interesting things yourself, because then people will want to meet with you. And second is like, build up an audience. Um, like we did this, we built up an audience, we asked for nothing in return, we spent time every single week doing this for like a year now, and It's amazing the value that we've been able to— it's more valuable than I realized”
Steal thisBuild an audience giving away value for a year, then tweet where you're traveling and let interesting people come to you.
Framework
Engineer serendipity, then let fate take over
Shaan distills Werdelin's dating approach into a transferable framework: don't reduce big life decisions to a rigid checklist, and don't leave them fully to chance. Do the work to put yourself in high-probability situations, then let real connection happen.
“You engineered serendipity, right? You did some work, but then you let real life take over and fate take over in a way where you said, you know, I don't know who I'll meet. I don't know who I'll connect with, but I'm just gonna put myself in positions where maybe I can increase the sort of odds of getting lucky.”
Steal thisFor big life decisions, engineer serendipity — put yourself in high-probability environments rather than relying on a rigid checklist or pure luck.