# Log

Append-only chronological record of wiki operations. Newest entries at the bottom.

---

## 2026-07-17 — init

**Operation:** Initialize vault storage.

**Changes:**

- Created folder tree: `raw/sources`, `raw/assets`, `wiki/sources`, `wiki/entities`, `wiki/concepts`, `wiki/timelines`, `wiki/comparisons`, `wiki/queries`, `wiki/lint-reports`.
- Created `wiki/overview.md` (`#overview`).
- Created `index.md` catalog.
- Created `log.md` (this file).

**State:** Empty wiki, no sources ingested. Awaiting first source in `raw/sources/`.

**Open questions:** What is the first source to ingest? Which entities/concepts anchor this domain?

---

## 2026-07-17 — ingest

**Operation:** Ingest everything from `raw/sources/` (2 files, full folder). First content ingest.

**Sources ingested:**

- `Design The Perfect Offer in Under 10 Minutes.md` → [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]] (undated video; ingestion date used for the filename prefix)
- `Принципы продажи услуг разработки в эпоху ИИ.md` → [[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]] (dated 2026-06-15)

**Changes:**

- Created 2 source summaries in `wiki/sources/`.
- Created 10 concept pages: [[ai-market-shift]], [[niche-selection]], [[pain-discovery]], [[outcome-based-selling]], [[productized-service]], [[pricing-from-value]], [[methodology-as-moat]], [[offer-ladder]], [[sales-discipline]], [[cloning-over-originality]].
- Created 1 comparison: [[solution-vs-staff-augmentation]].
- Rewrote [[overview]] from scaffold to full synthesis (domain thesis + 8-step dependency chain + contradictions).
- Rewrote [[index]] catalog with source/concept tables and a Known Gaps section.
- No entity pages created — no attributable subjects in either source (rationale recorded in [[index]] and [[overview]]).

**Findings:**

- The two sources independently converge on one thesis: AI substitutes undifferentiated execution and raises the value of judgment → sell productized outcomes with accountability, not hours. 7 of 10 concepts carry evidence from both, which is the vault's main confidence signal.
- Both sources argue the same side. The vault has **no** adversarial material on productization; agreement here is unreplicated advocacy, not confirmation.
- Every quantitative claim across both sources is uncited (90% below-minimum-wage, 80%/5th-touch, 91% vs 11% referrals, 47% subject line, $1:$6 AI spend, 30–50% margin, 15–25% webinar). Flagged on each page and in [[overview]]; not to be repeated as fact.
- The RU source is a *second-order* distillation — its 5–7 upstream notes are outside this vault under `PARA/4. Archive/15-06-2026 Inbox/`, so no claim from it can be traced to origin.
- Recorded 3 live contradictions rather than resolving them: calls vs. chat ([[sales-discipline]]); "sound unique" vs. "buy a proven method" ([[methodology-as-moat]]); cloning vs. moat ([[cloning-over-originality]]).
- Marked `Status: tentative` on the 3 single-source pages: [[offer-ladder]], [[cloning-over-originality]], [[solution-vs-staff-augmentation]].

**Open questions:**

- Import the 5–7 upstream notes from `PARA/4. Archive/15-06-2026 Inbox/` into `raw/sources/`? Highest-value next ingest — would let the RU claims be traced.
- Find an adversarial source: where does the productized model fail?
- Which market/currency do the $1K floor and $200/mo substitute assume, and do they transfer to the vault owner's market?
- When to productize: offer-first or after 2–3 identical projects? Unresolved across sources.
- Should Pabrai/Buffett/Munger/Graham get entity pages, or is the material too thin?

---

## 2026-07-17 — ingest (batch 2)

**Operation:** Pulled the eight `PARA/4. Archive/15-06-2026 Inbox/` notes into `raw/sources/` and ingested them alongside the Sebastian interview (already in the source folder). 9 new sources.

**Raw changes:** copied 8 files from `D:\Projects\Notes\Vault\PARA\4. Archive\15-06-2026 Inbox` into `raw/sources/` (originals left intact; kept source filenames for provenance). No existing raw file modified.

**Sources ingested (9):** Sebastian interview → [[2026-07-06-sebastian-interview-ai-and-software-engineering]]; and the June-15 batch → [[2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively]], [[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]], [[2026-06-15-how-to-get-rich-cloning]], [[2026-06-15-more-clients-dev-agency]], [[2026-06-15-making-money-with-ai-2026]], [[2026-06-15-konspekt-aphorisms]], [[2026-06-15-linkedin-mail-template]], [[2026-06-15-meta-analysis-selling-dev-in-ai-era]].

**Wiki changes:**

- +9 source pages; +6 entities ([[sebastian]], [[eugene]], [[virtido]], [[dmitry-rodenko]], [[mohnish-pabrai]], [[ab-analytics]]); +5 concepts ([[client-acquisition-channels]], [[relationships-as-moat]], [[product-ownership]], [[seniority-and-ai]], [[future-of-engineering-work]]).
- Updated all 10 prior concepts + the comparison: re-pointed "primary" citations from the distillation to the specific primary note; downgraded "uncited via distillation" hedges to "attributable but promotional/unverified."
- [[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]] reclassified primary → secondary (derived index); its dead `PARA/...` links replaced with links to the now-ingested notes.
- [[cloning-over-originality]] and [[solution-vs-staff-augmentation]] gained real primary sources; the former's `tentative` relaxed, the latter's kept (still one source) but enriched (one valid combination, Squad-model).
- Broadened [[overview]] domain to two branches (selling services + engineering-work positioning); rewrote its navigation, open threads, and contradictions.

**Findings / what changed in understanding:**

- **Provenance resolved.** The June-15 distillation was second-order; its 7 upstream notes are now ingested, so statistics and claims trace to named speakers ([[dmitry-rodenko]], [[ab-analytics]], Tony, [[mohnish-pabrai]]) — but the roots are promotional YouTube videos, so figures are *attributable, not verified*.
- **New domain branch + new contradiction.** The Sebastian interview added engineering-work concepts and the vault's sharpest live conflict: **online outreach ("Big zero") vs. multi-channel outbound.** Recorded, not resolved; best current read is audience-dependent (enterprise vs SMB/startup).
- **Second moat.** Relationships-as-moat now competes with methodology-as-moat.
- **[[eugene]] is plausibly the vault owner** (his `insin` project + custom Claude Code harness match the owner's tooling) — recorded as tentative inference.

**Open questions:**

- Still no adversarial/failure-case source on productization — now the top gap.
- Which moat (method vs relationships) and which channels apply to [[eugene]]'s actual buyers? Candidate first durable query.
- Corpus-flagged gaps unfilled: unit economics, legal/SLA packaging, CIS/EU niches, own case studies, objection scripts.
- A first **lint** is now worthwhile (34 pages, multiple tentative/contradiction flags).

---

## 2026-07-17 — query

**Operation:** Answered durable query — "What would be the best method to find the first client?" (Workflow B). First page in `wiki/queries/`.

**Question:** What would be the best method to find the first client?

**Answer (synthesis):** No single magic channel; the corpus converges on a *sequence* — (1) pick one narrow niche (precondition), (2) for a literal first client favor a warm/repeat-contact in-person channel (Chamber of Commerce / local groups; 3×=regular, 6×=trusted) over cold online, (3) work it with discipline (3 channels × 90 days, 5+ touches Day 0→3→7→14→30, founder sells), (4) convert client #1 into referrals immediately. In-person is the low-variance bet because it is the one thing [[ab-analytics]] and [[sebastian]] independently endorse; cold online only if buyers are SMB/startup. Tailored note for [[eugene]] (likely owner): reallocate LinkedIn/articles effort to recurring in-person events.

**Changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]] (`#query`).
- Added inbound links from [[client-acquisition-channels]] and [[eugene]] (both had this exact question open in "Next Questions"; converted to "partially addressed → see query").
- Updated [[index]]: new **Queries** section + page count 34→35 + status line.
- No source or concept *claim* changed — the answer is a synthesis of existing pages, not new evidence.

**Findings / caveats carried into the answer:**

- The online-vs-in-person split remains the governing uncertainty; the answer resolves it by audience (enterprise → in-person; SMB/startup → online viable), not by a universal law.
- All cited statistics remain attributable-but-unverified (promotional videos); flagged in the query page.
- Referrals are the highest-converting channel but cannot bootstrap client #1 — noted as a sequencing constraint.

**Open questions:**

- [[eugene]]'s actual niche/buyer type is still unchosen — it determines the online-vs-in-person call. Blocks a truly concrete plan.
- Is there a warm-intro path (existing content audience, embedded/CV contacts) faster than cold-in-person for the first engagement?
- Still no adversarial/failure-case source; a first **lint** remains the other worthwhile next operation.

---

## 2026-07-18 — ingest

**Operation:** Ingest single source — "Information Is Free, Implementation Is Paid" (Workflow A). 12th source; first on demand generation / content marketing as a discipline.

**Source ingested:** `raw/sources/Information Is Free, Implementation Is Paid.md` → [[2026-07-18-information-is-free-implementation-is-paid]] (undated YouTube video, 08:45; ingestion date used for the filename prefix). No raw file modified.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created 1 source summary in `wiki/sources/`.
- Created 1 concept: [[information-vs-implementation]] (thesis + 5×10×4 content factory + scramble trick + pain→solution structure). Single-source, marked `Status: tentative`.
- Enriched 4 concepts: [[client-acquisition-channels]] (organic-content channel developed; added as a **fourth**, most-bullish position on online — "content *is* the engine" — sharpening the online-vs-in-person split), [[pain-discovery]] (the nuanced-observable-pain AI prompt added as a content-side pain-articulation tool), [[methodology-as-moat]] ("sequencing is the paid good" as the marketing-side moat framing), [[pricing-from-value]] (free content as an upstream price anchor).
- Updated [[overview]]: source count 11→12; added the content-marketing engine to the Branch-A channel step; new highest-signal bullet ("information is free / scramble"); widened the online-vs-in-person contradiction; noted the source reinforces (not tests) the "sell dear" school.
- Updated [[index]]: +1 source row, +1 concept row, page count 35→37, status line, "eleven of twelve" gap note.

**Findings / what changed in understanding:**

- **New domain surface: demand generation.** Prior sources listed "content marketing" only as one of 17 channels; this is the first to treat it as a system — give away every step, withhold the *sequence*, and let the giveaway anchor the price.
- **The online-vs-in-person split is now the vault's widest live contradiction**, spanning "content is the entire lead engine" ([[information-vs-implementation]]) to "content = Big zero" ([[sebastian]]) — still best read as audience-dependent, still untested.
- **Reinforcement, not confirmation.** Same US "sell dear / give-value" coaching school; anonymous speaker, zero results data. Does **not** close the standing adversarial-source gap.
- New moat wrinkle: "sequencing is the moat" agrees with [[methodology-as-moat]] but strains [[cloning-over-originality]] — a publicly-shown (if scrambled) sequence is more re-derivable than a private method.

**Open questions:**

- Does the scramble strategy actually convert (view→lead→sale), or do sophisticated viewers re-sequence and self-serve? No evidence in-source.
- For [[eugene]]: is a content engine faster than the in-person channels favored in [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]], or only viable at audience scale? Could content be the *trust layer under* outbound (Tony's model) rather than a standalone source?
- ICP-band mismatch: the source anchors to $500K–$2M-revenue buyers, larger than the vault's usual SMB framing — which buyers does the engine actually fit?
- Adversarial/failure-case source and a first **lint** remain the two highest-value next operations (12 sources, multiple tentative/contradiction flags).

---

## 2026-07-18 — lint (sources)

**Operation:** First lint (Workflow C), scoped to the 12 `wiki/sources/*` pages per user request ("run a lint on sources"). Report → [[2026-07-18-lint]].

**Checks run:** raw↔summary coverage · page-type tags · template-section completeness · outbound-link validity · inbound linking / orphans · cross-source contradiction coverage · stale/superseded claims · metadata completeness · evidence provenance. Inbound/outbound link health verified against a full-vault `[[…]]` link inventory.

**Verdict:** source layer healthy. Complete 12-raw→12-summary coverage, no orphans, no broken links, all `#source` tags correct and first, all template sections present, provenance chain intact (distillation demotion + struck-through resolved question preserved as history).

**Findings (5; all Low/Info):**

- **F1 (fixed).** Content-marketing-timing contradiction was recorded two-way (Tony vs AB Analytics) but is now three-way — the 07-18 source makes content the *primary* engine. Upgraded the Contradictions bullet in [[client-acquisition-channels]] (rule #5).
- **F2 (fixed).** [[2026-06-15-linkedin-mail-template]]'s Change Impact claimed a link from [[sales-discipline]] that did not exist; template was inbound-linked from only one content page. Added the reciprocal link from [[sales-discipline]] — claim now true, weak link strengthened.
- **F3 (flagged).** [[2026-06-15-meta-analysis-selling-dev-in-ai-era]] is the most weakly inbound-linked source (only [[overview]] among content pages). Acceptable for a second-order map; optional future strengthening.
- **F4 (flagged).** Filename date-prefix convention is inconsistent for undated videos (ingestion date vs batch date vs file date). All documented in-page; suggest codifying "undated → ingestion date." No renames (link churn).
- **F5 (flagged, standing).** Corpus is 11/12 one school; all stats attributable-but-unverified. Adversarial source remains the top-value ingest.

**Changes:** edited [[client-acquisition-channels]] (F1) and [[sales-discipline]] (F2); created [[2026-07-18-lint]]; updated [[index]] (new Lint Reports row, page count 37→38, status line). No source-page *content* changed — findings were about link/contradiction coverage, not claims.

**Open questions / next:**

- **Full-wiki lint** is the natural follow-up (this pass covered sources only) — concept/entity pages, plus high-mention concepts lacking pages (e.g. *referrals*).
- Adversarial/failure-case source (F5) still the highest-value next ingest.
- Optional tidy: F3, F4.

---

## 2026-07-18 — ingest (first adversarial source)

**Operation:** Ran `deep-research` (Workflow tool, user-requested) to locate and verify empirical AI-productivity evidence, then ingested it (Workflow A) as the vault's **first adversarial source**. Research run: 106 agents, 6 angles, 23 sources fetched, 104 claims → 25 adversarially verified (23 confirmed, 2 refuted). Task `ww05pcpxq`.

**Raw created:** `raw/sources/AI Coding Productivity - Empirical Evidence (deep research 2026-07-18).md` — a new immutable synthesis file (no existing raw modified). It is second-order but built from peer-reviewed papers / RCTs / large surveys, so higher-provenance than any prior source.

**Source ingested:** → [[2026-07-18-ai-productivity-adversarial-evidence]].

**Wiki changes:**

- Created source page + 1 concept: [[ai-productivity-evidence]] (the durable home for the empirical counter-narrative). Both single-source → `Status: tentative`.
- Added explicitly-marked **counter-evidence** to [[ai-market-shift]] (substitute→complement), [[seniority-and-ai]] (novices gain most; now `Status: contested`), [[future-of-engineering-work]] ("coding cost → 0" qualified; DORA team-stability). Prior claims preserved, not overwritten (Update Policy); contradictions recorded explicitly (rule #5).
- [[overview]]: source count 12→13; added the foundational "AI capability — hype vs. measured evidence" contradiction; flipped the standing "no adversarial source" thread; added Branch-B caveat; new highest-signal item (perception ≠ measurement); navigation + concept list.
- [[index]]: +1 source row (flagged adversarial), +1 concept row, page count 38→40, status line, Known-Gaps rewrite, quantitative-claims exception noted.
- **No entity pages** for METR / Brynjolfsson / DORA / Stack Overflow — cited as evidence, not tracked subjects (consistent with the Buffett/Munger call on [[mohnish-pabrai]]).

**Findings / what changed in understanding:**

- **The premise beneath both branches is now contested, not settled.** Strongest developer-specific RCT (METR) found experts **19% slower** with early-2025 AI; best skill-distribution study (Brynjolfsson, *QJE* 2025) found **novices gain most (+34%)**, inverting "seniors up / juniors out." Perception-vs-reality gap (~39 pts) shows self-reported gains are unreliable.
- **Honest framing: qualifies, doesn't demolish.** Average effects are positive (14–15%); METR n=16 and "historical"; the strongest skill result is customer-support, not devs; all figures early-2025-scoped. Held to the same standard as the promotional sources.
- **It confirms a doubt the vault already held** — [[ai-market-shift]]'s "$200/mo substitute is asserted, not demonstrated" open question — rather than only contradicting.
- **The gap narrowed but didn't vanish:** this tests the *AI-capability* premise, not the *productization/sell-dear* tactics. A failure-case source for the selling model itself is now the top gap; a *pro-thesis* RCT-grade source would balance further.
- **Verification caught a real error** now avoided vault-wide: the widely-repeated "66% spend more time fixing AI code" conflates two SO-survey items; the correct debugging-time figure is **45%**.

**Open questions:**

- Does METR's −19% persist/reverse on mid-2026 agentic tools? (The source is explicitly historical.)
- Does "novices gain most" hold for real, complex codebases, or invert where juniors can't catch AI errors?
- Should [[dmitry-rodenko]]'s "$200/mo substitute / hourly dev is dead" now carry `Status: contested`?
- Next ingest candidates: (a) productization failure-case source; (b) pro-thesis rigorous source. Plus the still-pending full-wiki lint.

---

## 2026-07-18 — lint (full wiki)

**Operation:** Full-wiki lint (Workflow C) over all 40 pages — the follow-up to the sources-only lint. Every concept/entity/comparison/query page read in full; link health checked against a deduped inventory of all `[[…]]` targets. Report → [[2026-07-18-lint-full-wiki]].

**Verdict:** structurally healthy. **Tags 100%** (all 40 lead with the correct folder-matching type tag); **templates complete** (all 17 concepts + 6 entities carry the six required sections; query matches its template); **no broken links** (every target resolves; two `[[…]]` hits are code-span examples, one path-style `[[wiki/overview]]` normalized); **no orphans** (every page ≥7 inbound; new [[ai-productivity-evidence]] already at 26); **contradiction coverage thorough** (no unrecorded tension found).

**Findings (6):**

- **F1 (fixed, Medium).** [[productized-service]] still said "the vault needs an adversarial source" — stale after today's ingest. Updated Contradictions + Next Questions to acknowledge [[ai-productivity-evidence]] and sharpen the remaining gap (it tests the AI-capability premise, not the productization *model*); added a "substitution premise now contested" pointer + Related-Pages link.
- **F2 (fixed, Low).** [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]]'s "no adversarial source" caveat was imprecise; appended a dated lint note (original preserved) clarifying the new source addresses AI-capability, not the channel claims.
- **F3 (fixed, Low).** Normalized a path-style link `[[wiki/overview|Overview]]` → `[[overview|Overview]]` in [[index]].
- **F4 (flagged, Medium).** **No `referrals` concept page** despite heavy cross-source mention (91%/11%, highest-converting, ask-immediately mechanics) across [[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]], [[sales-discipline]], [[client-acquisition-channels]], the query. The clearest structural gap — recommend creating it.
- **F5 (flagged, Low).** Guarantee/risk-reversal is a candidate concept, currently well-covered within [[pricing-from-value]] + [[outcome-based-selling]].
- **F6 (flagged, Low).** Optional enrichment links from [[niche-selection]] / [[solution-vs-staff-augmentation]] to [[ai-productivity-evidence]].

**Note (not a defect):** today's adversarial ingest was correctly surgical — it added counter-evidence only to the three pages it truly contradicts and left [[relationships-as-moat]] / [[product-ownership]] alone, because "novices gain most" *corroborates* their "AI levels skill" premise rather than contradicting it. The vault records that contradiction but not the corroboration (optional future touch).

**Changes:** edited [[productized-service]], [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]], [[index]] (link + Lint Reports table + counts 40→41); created [[2026-07-18-lint-full-wiki]]. No source or concept *claim* altered beyond the staleness corrections.

**Open questions / next:**

- Create the [[referrals]] concept page (F4) — top structural gap.
- Productization-failure-case source remains the top content gap; a pro-thesis rigorous AI source would balance further.
- Optional: F5, F6, and the corroboration note.

---

## 2026-07-18 — create concept (referrals)

**Operation:** Created the [[referrals]] concept page, resolving finding **F4** from the full-wiki lint ([[2026-07-18-lint-full-wiki]]). A synthesis/refactor of material already in the vault (no new source ingested).

**Why:** referrals appeared as a distinct, high-value channel with its own statistics and mechanics across [[2026-06-15-17-ways-first-client]], [[sales-discipline]], [[client-acquisition-channels]], [[relationships-as-moat]], and [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]], but had no dedicated page — the clearest structural gap in the lint.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[referrals]] (`#concept #sales #outbound`), full template. Key content: the 91%-would / 11%-asked gap; ask-immediately / be-specific / frictionless discipline; the **two engines** (transactional ask vs. relational emergence); the **cold-start constraint** (referrals can't bootstrap client #1); referral *partners* as the one referral route not subject to cold-start.
- Wired inbound links (no orphan): [[client-acquisition-channels]] (taxonomy row + Related), [[sales-discipline]] (the ask bullet + Related), [[relationships-as-moat]] (the trust→referral chain + Related), [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]] (step 4).
- [[overview]]: added [[referrals]] to the selling-chain step 8 (flywheel/cold-start note) and the concept navigation list.
- [[index]]: +1 concept row, page count 41→42, concept count 17→18, status line; marked the lint's F4 gap ✅ resolved.

**Findings / notes:**

- Surfaced a **mild method tension** now recorded on the page: AB Analytics prescribes an explicit post-delivery *ask*; [[sebastian]]'s model has referrals *emerge* from repeated in-person trust. Treated as complementary (ask captures goodwill the relationship created), unreconciled by any source.
- The 91%/11% figures remain promotional/uncited (AB Analytics) — `Status: tentative` on the numbers, directionally corroborated by the relationship sources.

**Open questions / next:**

- Productization-failure-case source is now the top remaining gap (F5/F6 from the lint are optional).
- Candidate durable query: [[eugene]]'s concrete 90-day plan (the existing first-client query stops at method).

---

## 2026-07-19 — ingest (Your Company Can't Outgrow Your Team)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Your Company Can't Outgrow Your Team.md` (US leadership video, 4:35, undated, speaker unnamed) — the only raw source not yet in the wiki (14/14 now ingested).

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-19-your-company-cant-outgrow-your-team]] (`#source #leadership #team`), full template.
- Created [[team-growth-ceiling]] (`#concept #leadership #team`, `Status: tentative` — single anecdotal source). Carries: growth-math thesis (company grows only as fast as its people), Business Athlete framework (2 of 7 practices captured), public scoreboard / private criticism, Netflix Keeper Test, values hire→inspire→fire ("values are what you tolerate", "complexity fails, simple scales").
- [[overview]]: branches restructured two → **three** — added **Branch C: running the team** (explicitly thin/tentative); source count 13→14; navigation updated.
- [[future-of-engineering-work]]: Related-Pages link to [[team-growth-ceiling]] (team collapse to 2–3 makes per-person growth a larger share of the ceiling).
- [[index]]: +1 source row (anchors table), new "Running the team" concept group, counts 42→44, status line.

**Findings / notes:**

- This is the vault's **first internal-management source** — it doesn't touch selling (Branch A) or the AI labor shift (Branch B), so it opens a branch rather than reinforcing one. No contradictions with existing pages; recorded a *tension*: the Keeper Test presumes replaceability, which sits awkwardly with 2–3-person AI-era teams where each member is a single point of failure.
- Evidence quality is low (anecdotal talk, no data, speaker unnamed, framework only partially captured) — everything marked `tentative`; quotes attributed to the clip only.
- No new entities: the speaker is unnamed; Netflix is only the origin of the Keeper Test, not an actor here.

**Open questions / next:**

- Identify the speaker; recover the other 5 Business Athlete practices and the three values.
- Branch C is dormant for a solo operator — if [[eugene]] has no team yet, it matters only at first hire; note for the eventual 90-day-plan query.
- Standing gaps unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source.

---

## 2026-07-20 — ingest (Referrals Will Sink Your Business)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Referrals Will Sink Your Business.md` (US coaching video, 6:47, undated; [[dan-martell]] coaching a founder stalled at ~$1.5M). 15/15 raw sources now ingested.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-20-referrals-will-sink-your-business]] (`#source #marketing #content-marketing`), full template.
- Created [[marketing-system]] (`#concept #marketing #content-marketing`, `Status: tentative`) — money-in-at-top→money-out-at-bottom definition; the three levers (content / paid / partnerships), pick one × 90 days; "the new paid is organic" (organic is the *prerequisite* for paid, not an alternative); reps-not-views; the ~6-month lag.
- Created [[technical-founder-trap]] (`#concept #positioning #marketing`, `Status: tentative`) — solving ≠ explaining; explanation as the unlock.
- Created [[dan-martell]] (`#entity #person`).
- [[referrals]]: added a **Counter-position** subsection (dependency as a ceiling; referral flow has no throttle; "warning sign, not a badge") + Evidence/Related/Contradictions/Next-Questions revisions. Struck the page's standing "no adversarial source" bullet as **partially resolved**.
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: added the three-lever taxonomy with its scope analysis, a 5th row to the content-position table, the pick-1-vs-pick-3 conflict, Evidence + Related + 2 Contradictions.
- [[sales-discipline]]: added reps-not-views as independent corroboration of consistency-over-intensity + the six-month patience budget.
- [[information-vs-implementation]]: Summary re-scoped (mechanism still single-source; the *bet* now has two voices), "what the second source adds" (publishing as practice; organic→paid bridge; patience budget) and where the two differ (scramble trick is unique to source 1).
- [[eugene]]: recorded the rival diagnosis of his networking blocker (articulation vs. relationships) + 2 Related links.
- [[2026-07-19-your-company-cant-outgrow-your-team]]: recorded the tentative speaker-attribution hypothesis.
- [[overview]]: source count 14→15; **selling chain extended to a 9th step** ([[marketing-system]]); 2 new highest-signal items; new Open Thread (first channel counter-position, with its evidence caveat); 3 new/revised Contradictions; navigation + single-source list updated.
- [[index]]: +1 source row, +1 entity row, +2 concept rows, counts 44→48, status line, Known Gaps.

**Findings / notes:**

- **First source in the vault to attack a *tactic* rather than a premise.** The prior adversarial source ([[ai-productivity-evidence]]) contested the AI-capability premise; this one contests a channel every other source rated highest. Precision matters: it does *not* dispute that referrals convert best — it disputes **dependency**, on the grounds that referral flow has no throttle.
- **Kept the evidence grades separate.** This is *advocacy against advocacy* — a coaching clip, no data, author sells the prescribed alternative — not evidence in the sense the adversarial dossier set. Recorded as such on [[referrals]], [[overview]], and [[index]] so the gap isn't logged as fully closed.
- **Its rhetorical high point is its logical low point.** The Tones and I / Oliver Anthony anecdotes are survivorship selection and cannot support "everyone is one creative project away"; the narrower claim they *do* support (be shipping when it lands) was kept, the broad one flagged.
- **Reconciled by stage, and said so.** The three levers exclude outbound and referrals entirely — they are all one-to-many motions aimed at a founder who already has clients. So the source succeeds rather than refutes the vault's first-client answer ([[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]]). Flagged explicitly as the vault's inference, since that reading conveniently dissolves a conflict that may be real.
- **Recognised a merged claim rather than double-counting it.** "Can't bootstrap client #1" and "can't scale past a ceiling" are one structural property (referrals are *derived* demand) observed at two ends — noted on [[referrals]] so the vault doesn't read them as two independent findings.
- **Corroboration weighed, not counted.** Content-as-engine now has two voices ([[information-vs-implementation]] + this), but both are US coaching videos without conversion data — head-count moved, evidence didn't. Recorded on both pages and in [[overview]]'s channel contradiction.
- **Possible hidden dependency surfaced:** the unnamed speaker of the 07-19 leadership clip may be Dan Martell ("Business Athlete" framework, same genre). If true, two "independent" sources share an author. Logged as `tentative` inference in three places; **unverified** — no name appears in either raw note.

**Open questions / next:**

- Verify the Dan Martell attribution for [[2026-07-19-your-company-cant-outgrow-your-team]] before either source is treated as corroborating the other.
- Resolve pick-1 vs pick-3 channels, and the articulation-vs-relationships diagnosis for [[eugene]] — both now blocking a credible 90-day plan.
- Standing gaps unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source. New: nothing in the vault explains the *partnerships* lever.

---

## 2026-07-20 — attribution fix (Dan Martell ↔ "Your Company Can't Outgrow Your Team")

**Operation:** Resolved the open speaker question raised during the same-day ingest. The vault owner confirmed that [[2026-07-19-your-company-cant-outgrow-your-team]] — previously logged as "speaker unnamed" — is also [[dan-martell]]. Not a new ingest; a provenance correction with downstream consequences.

**Wiki changes:**

- [[2026-07-19-your-company-cant-outgrow-your-team]]: added a **Speaker** field to Source Metadata (with provenance: curator confirmation, not a documentary citation — the clip still names no one); resolved the Open Question; added [[dan-martell]] + [[marketing-system]] to Connections.
- [[team-growth-ceiling]]: status line now records the shared authorship; added a **cross-branch comparison table** (stall → misdiagnosis → real cause → mechanism, internal vs. external); Evidence re-sourced with the attribution; 2 new Contradictions; speaker question closed in Next Questions.
- [[dan-martell]]: extended from one source to two — added his Branch C positions, the **through-line** section, Evidence split by branch, sharpened the incentive caveat, 2 new Next Questions. Now the vault's only entity spanning two branches.
- [[2026-07-20-referrals-will-sink-your-business]]: Open Question closed ✅; Change Impact updated to record the same-day confirmation and what was applied.
- [[overview]]: the "possible hidden dependency" contradiction → **confirmed**, rewritten with the worldview/engine analysis; Branch C paragraph now names the author and flags the non-independence.
- [[index]]: status line, 07-19 source row, [[dan-martell]] one-liner, [[team-growth-ceiling]] row; replaced the "unverified attribution" gap with a **source-independence** gap.

**Findings / notes:**

- **The real cost is independence, and the real gain is coherence.** Branch C stops being an anonymous leadership talk (traceability up) but also stops being a voice independent of Branch A (corroboration down). Both recorded; the second matters more, because the vault's whole confidence method is convergence between unconnected traditions.
- **The attribution surfaced a synthesis that was invisible while the author was unknown.** Both clips diagnose a stalled founder and relocate the constraint inward — *the ceiling is never the market* — and both prescribe the same engine, **deliberate practice at volume**: "practice until we can't get it wrong" (people) and "the only thing you control is the volume of the reps" (marketing). Recorded as a table on [[team-growth-ceiling]] and a through-line on [[dan-martell]].
- **Flagged the convenience of that frame.** A coach whose diagnosis is always "the constraint is internal and fixable" is describing a world in which coaching is by construction the answer — and *"have a coach"* is one of his own seven Business Athlete practices. Noted on both pages; not treated as disqualifying.
- **Kept the provenance grade honest.** This is curator testimony, not an external citation. Strong enough to act on, recorded as what it is.
- Recovering the full Business Athlete framework (5 of 7 practices + 3 values missing) is now a *findable* task rather than a dead end — the highest-value cheap win for Branch C.

**Open questions / next:**

- Recover the full Business Athlete framework from Martell's published material.
- Does "the ceiling is never the market" ever fail? Neither clip admits a genuinely small or shrinking market exists.
- Unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top gap); pick-1-vs-pick-3; articulation-vs-relationships for [[eugene]]; the unexplained *partnerships* lever.

---

## 2026-07-22 — ingest (Stop Cold Calling, Do This Instead)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Stop Cold Calling, Do This Instead.md` (US sales video, 4:38, undated; **third [[dan-martell]] source**, named in the raw note itself). 16/16 raw sources now ingested. This one closes the standing "unexplained partnerships lever" gap.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-22-stop-cold-calling-do-this-instead]] (`#source #sales #partnerships`), full template.
- Created [[partnerships]] (`#concept #sales #marketing`, `Status: tentative`) — borrowed credibility as the enterprise entry mechanism; the six reverse-engineering questions; the partner-archetype recruiting playbook; the **throttle distinction** vs. client referrals (recruited vs. derived demand); "ten good partners can replace an outbound sales team"; scope ~$10K+ ACV.
- [[marketing-system]]: Summary re-attributed (single *author*, now two sources); lever table row updated; new "third lever, filled in" paragraph; **one-to-many framing qualified** (partnerships is one-to-few-to-many); Evidence; Related; the partnerships Next Question closed ✅.
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: three-lever bullet qualified; new **counter-position on cold outbound** paragraph (enterprise-scoped; Martell↔Sebastian convergence on trust-mediated entry); 2 new Contradictions; Evidence + Related.
- [[referrals]]: referral-partners paragraph now points to [[partnerships]]; the "referral variant with a throttle?" Next Question closed ✅ — including the resolution of Martell's apparent self-contradiction (anti-referral-dependency yet pro-partner-intros: control of the input differs, not the shape of the output).
- [[relationships-as-moat]]: new "convergence from the opposite pole" paragraph — **borrowed vs. built trust**; borrowed is faster but rented; Evidence + Related.
- [[dan-martell]]: Summary 2→3 sources; third-source positions block; through-line extended (**systematize what worked by luck** — every clip converts an accident into a machine); Contradictions updated (3 of 16 sources, largest single-voice share); partnerships Next Question closed ✅.
- [[eugene]]: networking blocker gains a *target* — recruit a partner archetype (for CV/embedded: industrial-equipment vendors / machine-builder integrators, flagged as untested inference); noted partner intros compose with *both* rival diagnoses (the room and the vouching).
- [[overview]]: source count 15→16; step-9 partnerships mechanism; new highest-signal item (borrowed credibility / throttle); new ✅ Open Thread; online-vs-in-person contradiction gains the enterprise-convergence nuance; Martell dependency updated to 3 sources; navigation + single-source list.
- [[index]]: +1 source row, +1 concept row, counts 48→50, status line, [[dan-martell]] one-liner, 2 Known-Gaps updates.

**Findings / notes:**

- **The gap this closes was flagged in three places** ([[marketing-system]], [[dan-martell]], [[referrals]] Next Questions) — all three now cite the answer, and all three answers carry the same caveat: the mechanism is single-author and anecdote-grade ($95K contracts, 7 pharma intros — war stories, no cohort).
- **The best finding is the throttle distinction.** Partner intros and client referrals produce the same output (a warm, trust-carrying intro), but partner *acquisition* is a controllable input while client goodwill is not. That is a structural claim that stands without any of the source's numbers, and it cleanly resolves what would otherwise be Martell contradicting himself across his own clips.
- **A genuine cross-voice convergence, from opposed poles.** Martell (content maximalist) and [[sebastian]] (content = "Big zero") independently agree that enterprise doors open on trust, not cold outreach — differing only on whose trust (borrowed vs. built). Recorded on [[relationships-as-moat]] and in [[overview]]'s channel contradiction as the strongest support yet for the audience-dependent reconciliation. This is the one place where the third Martell source adds weight *despite* the shared authorship, because the convergence is with a non-Martell voice.
- **Corrected an earlier vault characterization.** The 07-20 ingest described all three levers as "one-to-many motions" — the partnerships playbook (events, win the individual) shows that was overstated; the exclusion of the first-client toolkit is softer than it looked. Qualified on [[marketing-system]] and [[client-acquisition-channels]] rather than silently rewritten.
- **Named the title's overclaim.** "Stop cold calling" prescribes… approaching strangers at events — outbound redirected at a higher-leverage audience, not abolished. Recorded on the source page, [[partnerships]], and [[client-acquisition-channels]] so the anti-outbound position isn't over-read against Tony/AB Analytics, whose SMB segment this source never addresses.
- **Source-independence continues to thin:** Martell now authors 3 of 16 sources; [[team-growth-ceiling]], [[marketing-system]], and [[partnerships]] are one worldview. The restated three-lever taxonomy was logged as framework *stability*, not corroboration.

**Open questions / next:**

- **The entry bar is the new blocking question:** would a Tata-class (or any consequential) partner meet a no-name solo operator? Decides whether the lever is available to [[eugene]] at all. Related: what smaller-scale partners get paid, and the SMB partner archetype for dev services.
- The 90-day-plan query for [[eugene]] now has three unresolved inputs: pick-1-vs-pick-3, articulation-vs-relationships, and now content-vs-partnerships as *his* lever.
- Standing gaps unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source. Cheap win still open: recover the full Business Athlete framework.

---

## 2026-07-23 — ingest (Make My First $100K in Month)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Make My First $100K in Month.md` (US blueprint video, 22:54, undated; **fourth confirmed [[dan-martell]] source**, named in the raw note). 17/17 raw sources ingested. His first material addressed to a $0 operator — and the ingest that exposed the vault's single-voice problem as larger than counted.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-23-make-my-first-100k-in-month]] (`#source #offer-design #sales #demand-generation`), full template.
- [[dan-martell]]: 3→4 confirmed sources; fourth-source positions block ($0 protocol); through-line extended (**sequence over effort**); Contradictions — suspected authorship of 07-18 (near-certain, verbatim mechanism reuse) and 07-17 (plausible, "buy back 10 hours" = his book's frame), possibly 6 of 17; three within-author tensions logged (cold-call vs. stop-cold-calling; parallel engines vs. pick-one; $10K-dislike vs. $10K+ partnerships); pre-first-client Next Question closed ✅.
- [[information-vs-implementation]]: **"independent second voice" claim withdrawn** (superseded note — the founding anonymous source is near-certainly Martell too); Flowtown 350K→50K added as first (self-reported) outcome figure; scramble/prompt restatement recorded as stability, not corroboration.
- [[offer-ladder]]: second ladder ($500/$1K/$10K) with explicit **decoy rationale**; Summary re-scoped ("two examples, possibly one voice"); ratio instability (5× vs 10× top) and sellable-flanks vs. decoy-flanks disagreement recorded.
- [[productized-service]]: offer-first camp gains a source (marketing-before-building, Maritime-vs-Flowtown); format triage added ("customer cash funds the eventual product"); **$50 paid-waitlist pre-sell** — cross-tradition convergence with RU validate-before-build; when-to-productize weighting re-stated (3:2 by sources, maybe 3:1 by voices).
- [[pricing-from-value]]: money map added ($1K floor restated, sub-$10K ceiling, "investment" language); floor's "second assertion may be the same speaker" caveat.
- [[outcome-based-selling]]: time/money/status triad; five offer elements (outcome/deliverable/investment/risk-reversal/urgency); "features tell, outcomes sell."
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: parallel-engines paragraph (outbound present at $0 → supports stage reading; within-author tension); phone-mining ladder; enterprise-scoping of "stop cold calling" **confirmed from inside the corpus** (he cold-calls SMB).
- [[sales-discipline]]: closing playbook (chat DM flow, cold-call qualify-and-book); **objections-vs-obstacles** (first concrete principle for the meta-analysis's objection-script gap); volume rules (100 no's/day, first-5 throwaways, 30-second callback, AI transcript review, spend-nothing-until-paid); calls-vs-chat contradiction softened (one source prescribes both).
- [[referrals]]: third engine added — **"ask past the person"** network mining (referral-shaped intros with no past client — dodges the cold-start constraint); Eugene next-question updated.
- [[marketing-system]]: scope note upgraded (same-author $0 protocol confirms the staged reading); pick-one contradiction gains the parallel-engines complication.
- [[partnerships]]: stage tension logged ($10K-dislike at $0 vs. $10K+ scope at scale).
- [[niche-selection]]: business-owners-at-$1K+ buyer default; Ikigai as first supply-side filter.
- [[eugene]]: two additions — a concrete day-one move (phone-mining/ask-past-the-person) and a stage/format mismatch (his CV/embedded deals are naturally few×$10K+, the shape Martell's blueprint avoids).
- Source pages [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]] and [[2026-07-18-information-is-free-implementation-is-paid]]: speaker open-questions updated with the attribution evidence.
- [[overview]]: source count 16→17; convergence caveat (US pole is substantially one corpus); 3 new highest-signal items (ask-past-the-person, obstacles-not-objections, money map); new Open Thread ($0 blueprint + single-voice audit); hidden-dependency contradiction expanded (4 confirmed + 2 suspected); calls-vs-chat and channel-count updates; statistics list extended.
- [[index]]: +1 source row, counts 50→51, status line, Martell one-liner, Known Gaps rewrite (source independence), one conflict resolved ✅ (cold-call scoping).

**Findings / notes:**

- **The biggest finding is not in the source — it's about the corpus.** The video reuses the scramble trick, the "10 nuanced and observable problems" prompt, and the "describe their pain better than they can" line **verbatim** from the anonymous 07-18 content source — in a video that names Martell. That makes him its near-certain author, which retroactively deletes the "independent second voice" the vault granted content-as-engine on 07-20. The 07-17 anchor is also suspect ("buy back 10 hours of your time per week" — *Buy Back Your Time* is Martell's book; $997 core; chat-first close). If both hold: **6 of 17 sources are one coach**, including one of the two "independent anchors," and every intra-US-pole convergence (the $1K floor stated "twice," the three-tier ladder appearing "twice") is self-agreement. The RU side (Rodenko, AB Analytics, Tony) now carries nearly all of the vault's independence weight.
- **Martell contradicts Martell, three times, and the scope lines are never drawn.** Cold calling is "the hardest path" (07-22) yet a prescribed channel (07-23); pick one lever (07-20) yet run two engines in parallel (07-23); he dislikes 10×$10K (07-23) yet his partnerships play is $10K+ ACV (07-22). All three plausibly resolve as **stage/segment scoping** ($0-SMB start vs. $1.5M+ scale/enterprise) — and the parallel-engines protocol actually *supports* the vault's earlier staged-reading inference — but no clip states the boundary. Recorded without silent reconciliation.
- **One genuine cross-tradition gain:** the $50 paid-waitlist pre-sell (money as the validation signal) independently matches the RU "validate before writing code" rule — different tradition, same discipline, and the paid version is the stronger test.
- **First outcome number for content-as-engine, for what it's worth:** Flowtown 350K visitors → 50K customers — self-reported, blog-era, different business model. Until now the concept had zero numbers; now it has one bad one.
- **Most portable new tools:** objections-vs-obstacles (surface concerns pre-offer), and "ask past the person" (the one referral-shaped motion available with no past clients — directly relevant to [[eugene]]'s cold start).

**Open questions / next:**

- **Owner action, cheap and high-value: confirm or refute the two suspected attributions** (is the 07-18 content video Martell? is the 07-17 offer-design video Martell?). One answer settles whether the single-voice share is 4, 5, or 6 of 17 — and whether the vault still has two independent anchors or one.
- Does the 100×$1K sweet spot survive delivery load for a solo operator (100 concurrent customers vs. 10 heavier deals)? The video never costs out support.
- Where is the seam between Martell's start protocol (both engines, cold calls, SMB) and his scale protocol (one lever, partners, no cold calls)? Revenue, headcount, segment — unstated.
- Standing gaps unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source, Business Athlete framework recovery.
- The 90-day-plan query for [[eugene]] now has a fourth input: the $0 blueprint's *sequence* (offer → pre-sell → build; phone-mining first) fits him; its *format* (SMB × $1K chat/cold-call) does not — his domain implies few × $10K+, which pushes toward [[partnerships]] and the in-person route instead.

---

## 2026-07-26 — ingest (Как Построить МИЛЛИАРДНУЮ КОМПАНИЮ в 2027)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Как Построить МИЛЛИАРДНУЮ КОМПАНИЮ в 2027.md` (RU YouTube video, 34:52, undated; speaker **Oskar Hartmann** — KupiVIP/ShoppingLive founder, Fab.com shareholder, identified by context in the raw note). 18/18 raw sources ingested. **The vault's first third-tradition voice** — VC/product-startup world, independent of both the Martell corpus and the RU dev-sales cluster.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-26-how-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-2027]] (`#source #gtm #strategy #pricing`), full template.
- Created [[oskar-hartmann]] (entity; identification `tentative` — by raw-note context, not on-camera statement).
- Created [[sales-channel-as-moat]] (`#concept`) — **moat candidate #3**: the repeatable, scalable channel with predictable CAC (Pediant vs FlatPay; FlatPay founder on business #6 through the same channel; LTV×⅓-CAC entry-barrier mechanism).
- Created [[unit-economics]] (`#concept`) — full-cost pricing (forgotten lines: distribution, *repeat* acquisition, amortization, write-offs; "cash gaps are real losses"), demand→cost→price sequence, buffer/best-year rule, $1,000 credit-card CAC. **Partially fills the CAC/LTV gap flagged by the meta-analysis since day one** — general principles present, B2B-services version still missing.
- Created [[venture-fit]] (`#concept`) — ~1% rule, venture stretch kills (Fab.com $1.5B round → bankruptcy), family-owned/slow-growth alternatives, ShoppingLive case, AI capital suction.
- [[partnerships]]: **first independent second voice on the page** — adversarial on partner-as-savior (46th-priority problem, gatekeeper margin capture, 100–200× shortfalls; his own $20M one-partner deal filed as boost-not-channel), convergent with Martell on many-partners-never-one; scope split recorded (referring partner vs distribution partner — the disappointment mechanism bites the latter harder); status upgraded from "single author" to "mechanism single-author, warning two-voice."
- [[pricing-from-value]]: **pricing power as the PMF test** (raise prices, watch the flow — the cheapest test in the vault; "simulation of entrepreneurship" for price-takers); "most sell below full cost" joins sell-dear from the *cost* side; convergence note upgraded — first out-of-school voice.
- [[niche-selection]]: SOM > TAM (HVAC-agent example, Manifest immigration-law unicorn); narrow-first now converged by **three independent traditions** — the vault's best-supported claim after the core thesis; beachhead nuance added.
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: attention-economics hierarchy (search → banner → offline events → TV; "average loud beats better silent"; AI noise — 2,000 LinkedIn messages); whale-client counter-position (Pediant — org churn outlives long integrations); third position on channel count (**1 repeatable → then multichannel** — closest any source comes to stating the vault's staged reconciliation).
- [[marketing-system]]: the machine-vs-arriving-demand **core gains an independent second voice** (repeatable channel with predictable economics as the company-defining asset); three-lever framework remains Martell-only; pick-one contradiction gains Hartmann's both-ends position.
- [[sales-discipline]]: founder-sells now stated by **three traditions** — including as Hartmann's explicit investment criterion ("I don't invest where the founder doesn't sell").
- [[technical-founder-trap]]: **feature-#26 syndrome** — the product-startup form of the trap (builds instead of sells vs can't explain); Hartmann's blunt behavioral fix vs Martell's skill-building one.
- [[ai-market-shift]]: vibe-coding product glut ("10–15 great products in Cloud Code"); attention as the scarcest resource; the ~$4B Anthropic/OpenAI PE land grab; AI labs sucking venture capital dry.
- [[methodology-as-moat]]: two-moat framing updated to **three**.
- [[eugene]]: two cheap self-tests (SOM question; pricing-power probe on the next quote); venture-fit seconding of his bootstrapped default; many-small-partner-bets caveat.
- [[overview]]: source count 17→18; third-tradition paragraph; step 10 added to Branch A (channel/unit-economics/venture layer); 3 new highest-signal items (pricing-power probe, channel-beats-technology, "46th priority"); three-moats contradiction; channel-count contradiction updated; statistics list extended; unit-economics gap marked partially filled; new ✅ Open Thread.
- [[index]]: +1 source row, +3 concept rows, +1 entity row, counts 51→56, status line, Known Gaps updates (independence improved; adversarial gap; unit-economics partial fill; 6-of-18 renumbering).

**Findings / notes:**

- **The headline is independence.** After the 07-23 single-voice audit shrank the US pole, this ingest materially rebuilds the vault's confidence base: a third tradition independently restates the spine — selling beats building, founder sells first, narrow beats broad, sell dear. Narrow-first (SOM>TAM) and founder-sells are now the vault's most broadly converged claims after the core thesis.
- **The partnerships page finally has a second voice, and it's a warning.** Not a flat contradiction: Hartmann's failure mode (single gatekeeper, partner-as-distribution-channel) and Martell's playbook (many recruited referring partners) overlap only partially, and both state the many-never-one rule. The vault's reconciliation — an intro costs the partner nothing, shelf space costs plenty — is recorded as `tentative` inference.
- **Pediant vs FlatPay is the source's best structural argument:** channel beats technology because the channel is *reusable across products* (business #6) while a product is not. It founds moat candidate #3 and independently corroborates [[marketing-system]]'s machine-vs-arriving-demand distinction.
- **Scope mismatch flagged throughout:** the source addresses product startups choosing venture vs bootstrapped growth; the vault's domain is dev services. Transfer judgments (which claims carry over) are marked per page as the vault's own inference.
- **Grade caution:** everything is stage-war-story grade — 100–200×, $1,000 CAC, $4B JVs, 12h/40GB, Apple-45× are uncited; the speaker sells a paid "unicorn creator" program (same incentive caution as Martell); the Tim Cook claim is factually contestable and recorded as a framing device.

**Open questions / next:**

- What is the **services analogue of FlatPay's door-to-door** — the one repeatable channel a dev-services operator could run to predictable closes? (Connects directly to the 90-day-plan query for [[eugene]].)
- Does the LTV×⅓-CAC rule mean anything for lumpy B2B-services LTV? The flagged unit-economics gap is narrowed, not closed — a B2B-services-specific economics source would close it.
- Do referring partners (Martell's kind) actually escape Hartmann's disappointment mechanism, or does the 46th-priority problem bite intros too once the novelty fades?
- For [[eugene]], two cheap owner actions now queued: the pricing-power probe on his next quote, and naming his SOM in one sentence. Standing owner action unchanged: confirm/refute the two suspected Martell attributions (decides 4/5/6 of 18).
- Standing gaps: productization-failure-case source (still top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source, Business Athlete framework recovery.

---

## 2026-07-26 — query follow-up (create concept: TAM / SAM / SOM)

**Operation:** User asked "what are SOM and TAM?" after the Hartmann ingest, then requested the definitions be turned into concepts. Created **one** canonical page rather than three stubs (merge-over-duplicates rule): [[tam-sam-som]].

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[tam-sam-som]] (`#concept #strategy #positioning`) — the three nested circles (table), the SOM > TAM directional rule, the beachhead reading (TAM stays behind the SOM as the growth story), and a terminology caveat.
- **Attribution honesty:** TAM/SOM usage and all examples trace to [[2026-07-26-how-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-2027]]; **SAM is standard industry vocabulary from general knowledge, present in no ingested source** — marked as such in Evidence and Contradictions, with a rule that a future ingested source's definition wins.
- Linked from [[niche-selection]] (SOM>TAM paragraph), [[venture-fit]] (Related), the source page (Connections), [[overview]] (navigation).
- [[index]]: +1 concept row, counts 56→57, status line.

**Findings / notes:**

- The page's one non-obvious contribution: the **beachhead vs fortress distinction** — a SOM chosen as an entry point to a bigger market (Hartmann/venture logic) and a niche chosen for durable narrowness (Rodenko's AI-weak methodologies) are different strategies wearing the same circle. No source distinguishes them; flagged as an open contradiction.

**Open questions / next:**

- For [[eugene]]: is industrial-equipment CV/embedded a beachhead or a fortress? The answer changes what "winning the SOM" should lead to.
- No honest sizing method in the vault yet (all circles in pitch practice are constructed top-down) — worth capturing if a source supplies a bottom-up one.

---

## 2026-07-26 — ingest (Главный Принцип УСПЕШНОГО БИЗНЕСА)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Главный Принцип УСПЕШНОГО БИЗНЕСА.md` (RU YouTube video, 17:52; **second [[oskar-hartmann]] source**, named in the raw note — which also effectively confirms the context-based attribution of the first). 19/19 raw sources ingested. Central thesis: **"Сначала продавай, потом строй"** — sell first, then build; only money votes.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-26-main-principle-of-successful-business]] (`#source #validation #strategy`), full template.
- Created [[sell-before-build]] (`#concept`) — signal hierarchy (click < waitlist < payment < **pre-payment**); cheap-experiment toolkit as a cost-ordered table (AI-mockup blast, landing→payment screen, fake payment screen, fake-door buttons, Wizard-of-Oz, paid pre-order); acute-pain bridge; duration-without-revenue red flag. **Rule is three-tradition** (RU validate-first + Martell $50 paid waitlist + Hartmann toolkit); mechanics single-source `tentative`.
- [[productized-service]]: pre-sell paragraph upgraded to **three traditions**; sharpened bar recorded (unpaid waitlist doesn't count — makes Martell's *paid* slot the load-bearing detail); **when-to-productize dispute updated** — offer-first camp gains its first genuinely independent voice, but with the scope caveat that the camps may answer different questions (validate-before-build vs standardize-after-repetition; vault synthesis, would dissolve the dispute if right).
- [[pain-discovery]]: **acute-pain test** added ("good business = everything is bad and people still pay"; hospitals) — revealed preference at its purest; smallest-group-**by-name** targeting (a SOM statement → [[tam-sam-som]]).
- [[cloning-over-originality]]: **first independent second voice** — app studios that "forbid themselves from inventing," Samwer's fake-button eBay clone built in click-count order, robot-data founder copying 10 LLM-data playbooks; adds the clone-then-*measure* answer to the page's unobservable-details worry; status line updated.
- [[sales-discipline]]: duration-without-revenue red flag recorded as cross-tradition convergence with Rodenko's "год перепаковки — для тех, кто боится взять трубку" (same claim, seller's coach vs investor screening pitches); launch-ugly / endure-reality-early.
- [[unit-economics]]: **Zavent post-payment trap** ("a bank financing its clients" — payment timing as a unit-economics variable); $80–100 CAC-burn barrier restated (within-author consistency, flagged as such); status line now "single author, two sources."
- [[sales-channel-as-moat]]: CAC-burn restatement noted (stability, not corroboration).
- [[oskar-hartmann]]: second source; **framework-stability block** (prove-demand-first, money-as-signal, CAC-burn all restated consistently); one within-author tension logged (founder-sells-personally vs automated payment-screen tests — plausibly segment-scoped, unstated); attribution upgraded to confirmed; credibility note (two self-reported failures — coworking, Zavent — unusual among the vault's promotional voices).
- [[eugene]]: runnable pre-build checklist (10 named industrial prospects; deposit-backed audit/discovery sprint as the services analogue of a paid waitlist; semi-manual first CV-inspection delivery); composes with phone-mining.
- [[overview]]: source count 18→19; third-tradition thread expanded (two sources, framework stability, cloning corroboration, deception caveat); step 5 gains [[sell-before-build]]; 2 new highest-signal items (only-money-votes / coworking test; acute-pain test); when-to-productize contradiction updated; statistics list extended.
- [[index]]: +1 source row, +1 concept row, counts 57→59, status line, Hartmann one-liner.

**Findings / notes:**

- **Best structural gain: validate-before-build is now the vault's second three-tradition claim** (after narrow-first/SOM). RU dev-sales, Martell, and Hartmann all state it independently, and Hartmann resolves the apparent Martell-vs-Hartmann waitlist discrepancy himself: unpaid lists don't count, *paid* ones do — the two prescriptions agree at the money bar.
- **[[cloning-over-originality]] finally has a second voice** — it had been flagged since June as single-lineage. Hartmann's cases add the missing mechanism: where Pabrai clones judgment, Samwer clones the artifact and lets *instrumentation* pick priorities.
- **Ethics recorded, not endorsed:** two toolkit rows (fake payment screen, fake-door buttons) collect purchase intent under false pretenses; caveat placed on both the source page and [[sell-before-build]], with the honest variants (visible pre-order, paid waitlist, manual MVP) noted as carrying most of the same signal.
- **"Build.ai" flagged as almost certainly Builder.ai** (general-knowledge note, marked as such): the company collapsed into insolvency in 2025 amid allegations its AI was largely manual work — which makes Hartmann's "great way to start" framing half the story; the same case is the cautionary tale for never graduating from Wizard-of-Oz.
- **One new tension for the articulation thread:** "don't dictate what the customer should want" vs [[pain-discovery]]/[[outcome-based-selling]]'s name-the-pain-better-than-they-can. Likely scoped (product demand vs service framing); logged on [[sell-before-build]] and the source page.

**Open questions / next:**

- **What is the smallest *paid* test for a dev-services offer?** (Paid audit? Deposit-backed discovery sprint?) Feeds [[eugene]]'s 90-day-plan query directly — arguably its missing first step.
- Does the Zavent pre-pay rule survive B2B services reality, where net-60/90 post-payment is standard enterprise practice? If enterprise never prepays, is enterprise demand untestable by this method — or is a paid pilot the equivalent?
- Hartmann's two sources are consistent; a third would test whether the stability holds across formats (talk vs interview).
- Standing gaps: productization-failure-case source (still top — note the when-to-productize dispute may partially *dissolve* instead), pro-thesis rigorous AI source, Business Athlete recovery, the two Martell attribution checks.

---

## 2026-07-26 — query (Eugene's concrete 90-day plan)

**Operation:** Answered the standing next-query flagged on [[index]], [[eugene]], [[client-acquisition-channels]] and [[overview]] since 2026-07-17: turn the corpus into [[eugene]]'s **dated** channel/niche plan, and resolve the live tension inside it (in-person first-client route vs. building a [[marketing-system]] early). Read-only over 12 existing pages; no source claim altered.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-26-eugene-90-day-plan]] (`#query #sales #planning`) — assumptions table (A1–A5, all `tentative`), the stage-based resolution, channel commitment, week-by-week plan 2026-07-26 → 2026-10-24, Day-90 gate, evidence trail, follow-ups.
- [[eugene]]: 90-day-plan Next Question closed ✅; new bullet on the two rival diagnoses now being cheaply testable; 2 Related Pages links.
- [[sell-before-build]]: its "smallest paid test for a dev-services offer" question struck through with a **proposed answer** (fixed-scope paid diagnostic) + its falsifier.
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: the "which 3 channels for Eugene" question answered ✅, with the load-bearing assumption named.
- [[2026-07-17-best-method-first-client]]: successor callout — method vs. schedule; core recommendation explicitly preserved.
- [[overview]]: "Application is unstarted" → "Application has started — an experiment awaiting data"; stale `Timelines / Queries / Lint reports: empty` navigation line corrected (it had listed 3 existing pages as empty).
- [[index]]: +1 query row, counts 59→60, queries 1→2, status line, next-operation note.

**Findings / notes:**

- **The tension resolves by stage, not by compromise.** The three-lever map comes from a clip aimed at a stalled-$1.5M founder and omits outbound/referrals/in-person entirely; the same author runs one-to-one at $0; [[oskar-hartmann]] nearly states the staged rule outright. So: one-to-one is the engine. **But not to zero** — [[marketing-system]]'s ~6-month lag means "start it when you need it" starts it late, and publishing doubles as the articulation reps [[technical-founder-trap]] prescribes. Budgeted at ~2h/week, explicitly not measured on leads.
- **pick-1 vs pick-3 dissolves for this case** under the units reading the vault had already inferred: one *lever* (relationship-mediated one-to-one), three *venues*. Both rules satisfied at once — the conflict is not settled in general, only routed around here.
- **Four vault-original contributions, all inference and marked as such:** (1) the stage resolution with its non-zero-deposit exception; (2) the **Week-2 phone mine as the discriminator** between [[technical-founder-trap]] and [[relationships-as-moat]] — the vault has called those two diagnoses "testable against each other" since 07-20 without ever specifying the test; (3) the **paid diagnostic** as the smallest paid test for dev services; (4) a Day-90 gate scored on **inputs**, applying reps-not-views to the plan itself.
- **Honest weak joints, recorded in the plan rather than smoothed over:** the niche (A2) and the enterprise-lite buyer read (A5) are vault inferences that carry the entire channel decision; the industry room is unnamed; A4 (prior paid work to mine) is unverified; every threshold in the gate is invented, its function being pre-commitment, not accuracy.
- Evidence-quality caveat restated on the page: no failure-case source exists for the productized/sell-dear model, so nothing in the plan has been tested against a documented loss.

**Open questions / next:**

- Owner-answerable, and they unblock the plan's weakest joints: which machine-builder/automation association or trade fair meets often enough for the 3×/6× mechanic, and **will an industrial buyer pay for a diagnostic at all** (if free feasibility is the norm, Month 2 needs redesign).
- Standing owner actions unchanged: confirm/refute the two suspected [[dan-martell]] attributions (several rungs of this plan rest on his corpus — 4 vs 6 of 19 matters here); the pricing-power probe; naming the SOM in one sentence (now Week 1, step 1).
- **A lint is due.** Last full lint was 2026-07-18 at 40 pages; the wiki is now 60, with [[sales-channel-as-moat]], [[unit-economics]], [[venture-fit]] all single-source `tentative` and unlinted, and this query adding a page whose inbound links are all fresh.
- Standing gaps: productization-failure-case source (still top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source, Business Athlete framework recovery.

---

## 2026-07-29 — ingest (Start a business with Claude Code)

**Operation:** Ingested `raw/sources/Start a business with Claude Code.md` (conclusions note on a YouTube Short, 0:42, **author unnamed**, undated). 20/20 raw sources ingested. The vault's shortest and thinnest source: a $0→$1M playbook with [[claude-code]] as the full GTM stack — landing page + invented company + waitlist, scraped prospect list, cold-outbound script, close the sale, *then* build the product.

**Wiki changes:**

- Created [[2026-07-29-start-a-business-with-claude-code]] (`#source #validation #gtm #ai`), full template; evidence grade stated up front (42s, no cases, no figures, no named speaker — pure prescription).
- Created [[claude-code]] (`#entity #tool #ai`) — **the vault's first tool entity**: three corpus roles (build engine/commoditizer per Hartmann's "10–15 products in Cloud Code"; full GTM stack per this source; domain tutor/leveler), harness-market adjacency, capability counter-evidence linked.
- [[sell-before-build]]: fourth-voice echo noted in Summary (not counted toward independence until attributed); **AI-era compressed variant** paragraph — its unpaid waitlist fails the vault's money bar but its closed sale exceeds it; invented-company front filed with the deception-based toolkit rows; Evidence + Contradictions updated.
- [[ai-market-shift]]: **Leveler** row added to the roles table (domain knowledge on demand collapses the entry barrier); synthesis paragraph noting the odd alliance — [[ai-productivity-evidence]]'s novice-tilt cuts *against* expert-productivity hype but mildly *for* the leveler role, while still contesting the "then ask Claude to build it" step; [[claude-code]] added to Related Pages.
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: **second $0-stage voice for cold outbound** — AI-scraped list + AI-written scripts as the entire first channel; matches Martell's $0 blueprint shape (caveat: if the author is Martell, the match is self-agreement); further supports the $0/SMB-vs-enterprise scoping of cold outbound.
- [[sales-channel-as-moat]]: slogan echo recorded ("distribution is the moat, not code") — second voice for the *priority claim*, zero corroboration of the repeatability/CAC mechanism; status explicitly unchanged.
- [[technical-founder-trap]]: Evidence bullet — the source's stated audience ("developers who over-invest in building and under-invest in selling"; blocker psychological, not technical) as a slogan-grade restatement of the build-instead-of-sell form.
- [[overview]]: source count 19→20; corpus paragraph and navigation updated; entities line gains a *tools* group.
- [[index]]: +1 source row, +1 entity row, counts 60→62, status line, Known Gaps updated (third unattributed source joins the two suspected Martell items; denominators refreshed to /20), lint note 60→62.

**Findings / notes:**

- **Nothing in this source is new to the vault as a claim — that is the finding.** Sell-first, distribution-over-product, cold outbound at $0, bias to action: each already held, with better support elsewhere. Its marginal contributions are (1) the **Leveler** role for AI (genuinely new to [[ai-market-shift]]'s table), (2) Claude Code named as the executor of the *entire* pre-product stack, and (3) an ultra-compressed confirmation that this playbook has reached mass short-form content — the vault's spine is now ambient advice.
- **Attribution discipline applied up front this time.** After the 07-23 audit (anonymous sources later unmasked as Martell), this source is held at **echo-grade** on every page it touches: it shifts no status lines, gains no independence credit, and each page notes the attribution condition explicitly.
- **The playbook passes the vault's own money bar — but not where it appears to.** Its waitlist is unpaid (fails the Hartmann/Martell bar); its actual validation event is the closed sale in step 5, which sits above mere payment in the signal hierarchy. Recorded on [[sell-before-build]].
- **Ethics/compliance recorded, not endorsed:** the invented-company front is a fake *business* (kin to fake payment screens — same unmodeled reputational/legal cost), and scraped-list cold email carries GDPR/CAN-SPAM exposure. Neither cost appears in the source.
- **Contrast with the vault's own application:** [[2026-07-26-eugene-90-day-plan]] reaches the same sell-first conclusion but replaces the fake front with a paid diagnostic — the honest variant of the same discipline.

**Open questions / next:**

- **Who is the author?** Third unattributed short-form source (after the two suspected Martell items). No verbatim marker links it to any known voice; cheap owner action to check.
- Does "Claude will tell you how" survive regulated/physical domains (the owner's industrial CV niche), or only commodity digital services?
- **A lint is now overdue** — 40 pages at last full lint (2026-07-18), 62 now; this ingest also added a tool entity, a page *type* the lint conventions haven't seen.
- Standing gaps unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source, Business Athlete framework recovery, the two Martell attribution checks.

---

## 2026-07-29 — attribution update (Start a business with Claude Code = Dan Martell)

**Operation:** Vault owner confirmed the author of [[2026-07-29-start-a-business-with-claude-code]] is **[[dan-martell]]** (the short names no speaker; same provenance class as the 07-19 confirmation). His **5th confirmed source of 20** — possibly 7 with the two still-suspected. Propagated the relabel from "unattributed echo" to "within-author self-agreement" across every page the same-day ingest touched.

**Wiki changes:**

- [[2026-07-29-start-a-business-with-claude-code]]: metadata updated (author, provenance); author open question closed ✅; Connections rewritten (each link now names its relation — restatement vs new claim); Change Impact extended.
- [[dan-martell]]: 4→5 confirmed; **fifth-source positions block** (AI as the entire pre-product stack; the Leveler claim; distribution-is-the-moat slogan); **two within-author drifts logged** — the short's waitlist is *unpaid* against his own $50-paid-slot rule (07-23), and the invented-company front is deception-shaped with unmodeled cost; through-line updated to five sources; denominators refreshed (5 of 20, possibly 7); provenance note now covers both owner-confirmed clips; [[claude-code]] added to Related Pages.
- [[sell-before-build]]: "fourth voice" withdrawn — within-author restatement (Martell already counts among the rule's three traditions); the unpaid-waitlist nuance upgraded from cross-source observation to **within-author drift**.
- [[client-acquisition-channels]]: "independent match to the $0 blueprint" evaporated as predicted by the ingest's own conditional — relabeled framework stability; one genuine gain kept: the $0/SMB-vs-enterprise scoping of cold outbound now holds *across every format he publishes*.
- [[sales-channel-as-moat]]: the slogan echo folds into the already-recorded Martell/marketing-system convergence — no second voice; status explicitly unchanged.
- [[technical-founder-trap]]: Evidence bullet relabeled — same author as the page's founding source; restatement, not corroboration.
- [[ai-market-shift]]: Leveler attribution updated — Martell's first claim in the roles table; still single-source, slogan-grade.
- [[claude-code]]: roles table attributed; Contradictions sharpened — all promotional claims about the tool trace to exactly **two voices** (Martell, Hartmann).
- [[overview]]: Martell cluster four→five confirmed; hidden-dependency contradiction updated (5 of 20, possibly 7); corpus paragraph and navigation relabeled.
- [[index]]: source row, Martell one-liner, Known Gaps (single-voice problem **worsened**: 5 of 20), status line.

**Findings / notes:**

- **The echo-grade discipline paid for itself within a day.** Every page had recorded the source with an explicit attribution condition and zero independence weight — so the confirmation changed labels, not conclusions. No claim needs re-weighing; this is the cheapest possible outcome of an attribution reveal, and the direct payoff of the 07-23 audit's lesson.
- **Martell's share is now the vault's largest by a wide margin: 25% confirmed, possibly 35%.** The RU side (Rodenko, AB Analytics, Tony) and Hartmann now carry essentially all of the vault's independence weight. Practical consequence: any future US-coaching short-form ingest should be *presumed* Martell-adjacent until shown otherwise.
- **The two within-author drifts are the only new information.** Unpaid waitlist (vs his own load-bearing $50 paid slot) and the fake-company front (vs his "spend nothing until customers pay" — which at least is honest about money) — both plausibly short-form lossiness, but they show his compressed formats shed exactly the details his fuller protocols mark as critical. A caution for weighting any 42-second source, his or not.
- **One thing the attribution strengthens rather than weakens:** the enterprise-vs-$0/SMB scoping of cold outbound is now consistent across five Martell formats — within-author stability at that sample size is real evidence about *his* framework, if still none about the world.

**Open questions / next:**

- The two remaining attribution checks ([[2026-07-18-information-is-free-implementation-is-paid]] near-certain, [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]] plausible) are the same cheap owner ask that just resolved this one — settling them decides 5, 6, or 7 of 20, and whether the vault has two independent anchors or one.
- **A lint is overdue** (40 pages at last full lint, 62 now) — and it should now also check every page still describing Martell as "4 confirmed" or using stale /17–/19 denominators.
- Standing gaps unchanged: productization-failure-case source (top), pro-thesis rigorous AI source, Business Athlete framework recovery.
