#33. Steal These 4 Brutal Startup Truths Before Your Competition Does 🥊
This week’s playbook: why 20% extra effort changes everything, what solopreneurs get right, how Gen Z is rewriting the rules with AI, and how Repello AI is taking the fight to AI attackers.
Hello, sharp minds!
Welcome to the 33rd edition of More Than Buzzwords — your weekly dose of startup realities, brutal truths, and the kind of insights you don’t usually find on perfectly curated LinkedIn posts.
This week’s theme? Staying one step ahead.
Whether it’s solopreneurs playing the long game, founders realizing that 20% more effort can result in 10x outcomes, or early-stage startups rethinking everything after users start clicking — one thing is clear: advantage belongs to those who move, observe, and adapt faster than the competition.
While Gen Z is busy building AI-powered careers even before turning 25, a new startup is already fighting the dark side of AI with offensive security. And just as startups break new ground, Meta is quietly turning WhatsApp into its next monetization machine.
Here’s what’s inside this edition:
🔹 Tweets That Cut Deep — 4 sharp reminders on patience, focus, user behavior, and how AI is flattening experience gaps.
🔹 Startup Spotlight — Meet Repello AI: the offensive security startup trying to outsmart AI attackers before they even strike.
🔹 Platform Playbook — WhatsApp finally opens its gates to ads. Is this the end of your last ad-free app? We will soon know.
What the Smart People Are Tweeting 🐦
I’ve done my homework and handpicked the top 4 scroll-stopping insights with substance just for you! These tweets by industry experts on X will help you reshape your learning curve, take some bold steps, and unlearn the outdated mantras you’ve been holding onto.
Keep on reading to find sharp takes in small packages.
1. The One-Year Rule for Solopreneurs
Solopreneurship 101:
Spend 30 minutes a day building an audience and never ask them for anything.
Just give, give, give.
Next year? Ask.
This tweet speaks volumes. When you're building something on your own, there's a natural instinct to sell, get your offering out there, start seeing returns, get feedback, and move fast. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: trust has a timeline.
Spending just 30 minutes a day showing up for your audience—whether it’s sharing insights, answering questions, or just being consistently useful—can do more for your long-term success than any sales hack.
After a year of giving without expectation, you’ll earn something that’s hard to buy: credibility. So when you finally do ask people to buy, sign up, or support, they won’t hesitate. Because they already know what you bring to the table.
Give value first. Ask later. That’s how you build an audience that roots for you.
2. Why 20% More Can 10x Your Outcomes
Most people coast. Do what's asked. Check the box. Done.
Here's what’s crazy: extraordinary is only 20% more effort than average.
A little more focus and follow-through? You're lapping everyone else.
This tweet might be the nudge we all needed. We often imagine greatness as this massive, distant goal that comes after years of hustle, superhuman productivity, and sacrificing your sanity for success. But in reality? The difference between average and standout is often just a little extra attention and a little more intention.
These 20% more efforts can even look like: A sharper subject line, a second round of edits, or a follow-up email when no one else bothers.
And here’s the kicker: most people don’t go that extra 20%. Not because they can’t. But because they think the first 80% is “enough.”
That’s your window. If you feel like you're plateauing despite putting in effort, the good news is that you don’t need to double your effort; you just need to dial it up by a notch. That’s all you need to stand out.
3. Real Insight Begins After You Launch
You can obsess over copy. Debate UX flows. Argue over color schemes. But a single unexpected user behavior will rewrite more assumptions than a week of planning ever could.
This one brought back memories from a launch I was involved in while working at an early-stage startup. We’d spent weeks polishing the onboarding flow. Debated every word on the welcome screen, every shade of the CTA button. Then, launch day came, and guess what?
Users kept skipping the entire onboarding.
They didn’t care about our guided flow. They went straight to trying the core feature, tapping buttons like it was a game. We realized that while we were optimizing for logic, our users were operating on instinct.
We had to rethink our assumptions, re-prioritize the roadmap, and build around real behavior, not the behavior we hoped they’d follow.
Lesson? Planning is great. But real insight shows up in the mess of actual usage. The best founders don’t just build; they watch, adapt, and rebuild. Notion docs and Excel sheets can’t tell you what user behavior will.
Don’t just ship. Sit with how people actually use what you’ve built. That’s where strategy meets reality.
4. Gen Z + AI = A New Talent Stack
On a recent AI portfolio company's launch, was good to see their waitlist grow very quickly
What was more interesting was the age group joining the waitlist
62% of them were below 25 years of age, clearly using AI actively
AI is flattening experience related advantages
This stat hits hard, and not just because it's surprising, but because it signals a deep shift in how work, talent, and competition are evolving.
When 62% of your AI product waitlist is under 25, it tells you something deeper: younger folks are not easing into this new tech wave. They're riding it like natives, not tourists. For them, using AI isn’t an edge, it’s default.
This generation isn’t waiting to "gain experience" before contributing. They're building tools, launching side hustles, editing videos, coding apps, and writing content with AI as their co-pilot. That levels the field for a 23-year-old with curiosity and a laptop to do what once used to take full-fledged teams and decades.
In a world where tools are powerful and accessible, adaptability trumps tenure. The winners won’t be the ones who’ve been around the longest. They are going to be the ones who evolve the fastest.
These were my top four tweets from this week’s wisdom hunt. Which one did you like the most? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Now, let’s turn our focus to something that’s everywhere these days: AI. But as GenAI takes over, so do the bad guys. This week’s startup is playing offense by finding AI’s weak spots before attackers do. Let’s dive into Repello AI.
🛡️ Startup Spotlight: Repello AI
Playing Offense in AI Security
Let’s face it, AI is moving faster than most of us can finish our morning coffee. And while we marvel at ChatGPT, Midjourney, and all things GenAI, there’s a darker side creeping in: attackers are just as excited as we are.
Enter Repello AI, a startup that’s not waiting for breaches to happen, they’re hunting them before they do.
1️⃣ The Founders & The Birth of Repello AI
Founded in 2024 by IIT Roorkee alumni Aryaman Behera and Naman Mishra, Repello AI was born out of a simple, slightly terrifying realization: AI systems are highly vulnerable, and traditional security methods just aren’t cut out for this new frontier.
While most companies are scrambling to patch leaks after they’ve sprung, Behera and Mishra decided to flip the script; they decided to take an offensive approach to AI security.
Repello’s brain (engineering, R&D, product teams) operates out of Bengaluru, while its voice (sales, marketing) is busy making global noise from San Francisco.
2️⃣ What Repello AI Actually Does (and Why It’s Different)
So, what’s so special here? In short: Repello hacks your AI before anyone else can.
Their flagship tool, ARTEMIS (Automated Red Teaming Engine for Mapping, Identification, and Scanning), basically acts like an army of tireless, invisible hackers who stress-test your AI applications day and night. It runs millions of adversarial tests across text, images, and audio, hunting for weak spots that real-world attackers could exploit. Once it finds them, it doesn’t just ring the alarm, it gives you step-by-step fixes.
The second layer is Repello Guard. Think of it as your AI bodyguard. It works in real time, blocking toxic outputs, malicious prompts, even sensitive data leaks (like system prompt exposures), all in under 200 milliseconds. And it plugs directly into your AI pipeline without slowing your models down. Essentially: secure, seamless, and fast.
The coolest part? Their solutions are context-aware, meaning they tailor the defense strategy depending on how you’re using GenAI in your business. No generic, one-size-fits-all security blanket here.
3️⃣ The Market Impact & Who's Using It
The scary reality is: as companies rush to embed GenAI into everything, say chatbots, recommendation engines, content tools, they’re accidentally expanding their attack surface. And traditional security tools don’t even know where to look for these new risks.
Repello steps right into this gap. They’re already securing applications for customers across India and even a few names on the Fortune 500 list. North America is turning out to be their biggest playground thanks to the region’s aggressive AI adoption, but they’re also building a footprint in the Middle East.
4️⃣ The Funding Story
Repello recently raised $1.2 million in seed funding with Venture Highway, Pi Ventures, and Entrepreneur First backing their vision. Some heavyweight angels also jumped in: Meta board member Charles Songhurst, Sarvam AI CEO Vivek Raghavan, and Satya Vas. It’s a solid early validation that this problem space is only going to get hotter.
5️⃣ Where Repello Is Headed
For Behera and Mishra, the mission is clear: security can’t be passive anymore. It’s not enough to wait for attackers to strike. The goal is to stay one step ahead by continuously learning from real-world attack techniques and evolving defenses accordingly.
With this new funding, they’re doubling down on product development, expanding their red teaming capabilities, growing their threat intelligence engine, and scaling their go-to-market efforts.
As Behera puts it: "It’s a cat and mouse game." The trick is making sure the defenders stay faster, smarter, and a bit more cunning than the attackers.
What do you think about this startup? Are they up for a real win?
From startups fighting AI threats to tech giants chasing new revenue streams – innovation wears many hats. Speaking of which, WhatsApp just made a move we all kind of saw coming. Keep on reading to find out more!
🧐 Meta’s next move: Monetizing WhatsApp
From YouTube to Spotify — ads somehow find a way to sneak into every corner of our digital lives, right? Well, now they’re coming for what’s possibly the last ad-free sanctuary most of us had: WhatsApp. Yep, get ready because the world’s most used messaging app is now rolling out ads.
For the first time ever, Meta (which owns WhatsApp) is introducing advertisements directly inside the app. But don’t panic because they won’t pop up in your personal chats (at least for now). Instead, the ads will quietly appear in the Updates tab, specifically when you’re swiping through your contacts’ Status updates or browsing Channels.
Meta says the idea is to help businesses connect with users directly. You see a cool product in a Status? You can message the brand right then and there. Channels, too, are getting a little more commercial as admins will soon be able to promote their channels to gain more visibility. And yes, there’s also a paid “exclusive updates” subscription option coming for Channels. Think premium content access, but inside WhatsApp.
The ads you see will be somewhat personalized based on your country, city, language, and Channels you follow. And if your WhatsApp is linked with your other Meta accounts (hello Facebook and Instagram), your ad experience might get even more... tailored.
But don’t expect to see these ads flooding your screen overnight. Meta says they’re rolling this out slowly, giving users time to read (and accept) the updated policy. Smooth, right?
On a broader note, this move is part of Meta’s ongoing effort to unlock new revenue streams from WhatsApp, especially in markets like India where the user base is massive. While businesses earlier relied on Instagram ads that linked to WhatsApp chats, now WhatsApp itself is becoming more of a revenue machine.
Honestly, it was only a matter of time. Ads creeping into WhatsApp was pretty much inevitable. But how do you feel about it? Will WhatsApp still feel the same once the ads roll in? 👀
And that’s a wrap on the 33rd edition of More Than Buzzwords!
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