iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 13/07/2026

There’s nothing more depressing than building a product with a free tier. Free products attract the worst behaviour: obscure, illegal, and often amoral requests. It makes you lose faith in humanity. I can’t imagine what the safety teams at ChatGPT or any major social network deal with every day.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 18/06/2026

Today I gave a talk and pissed off some people. In an age of rampant sycophancy, I consider this a success. Just unfiltered strong opinions.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 02/06/2026

Yesterday I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating, heart racing. I grabbed my phone and immediately bought anthropig.com. Now I have two questions: - What should I build with it? - And will I go to jail if I do?

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 25/05/2026

I wrote a new article, exploring the consequences of pain and pleasure on LLMs. I had a lot of fun writing it, so don't take it too seriously. paoramen.fika.bar/agentic-plea...

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 24/05/2026

Why is everyone talking about 100 eggs developer

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 21/05/2026

I can't believe it... Handinger can play wordle? yeah, and is pretty good at it!

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 27/04/2026

Sports became mainstream when work stopped being physically exhausting. If AI does the same for mental labor (a big if), will we all end up playing more board games?

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 22/04/2026

Agents are like teenage sex: everyone talks about them, but most people aren’t actually having any. We’re building a new product for builders to automate work with agents super easily. No need for hosting, sandboxing, building complex harnesses, nor tools. Just an API. Interesting? let me know!

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 14/04/2026

"If you are not building B2B SaaS when you are young, you have no heart, and if you are not building agents when old, you have no brain" – Definitely not Winston Churchill

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 22/03/2026

Wouldn’t it be funny if the only thing AI ended up replacing was developers?

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 17/03/2026

Can’t believe the whole economy depends on these hands

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 03/03/2026

Last month was our best ever at Fika. 1,087 new publications & 564 new articles. We've also shipped: - Paid subscriptions - Reactions - Resizable images - Advanced stats (views, open rates, channels…) - Voice dictation - Embeds - …and polished the product to death.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 19/02/2026

I’ve written a piece about the early days of the Barcelona tech scene. Back when nobody really knew what they were doing, capital was scarce, ambition wasn’t, and everything felt one step away from either glory or failure. paoramen.fika.bar/hedonism-and...

paoramen.fika.bar

Hedonism and Entrepreneurship in Barcelona

Untold stories of an early startup scene

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 10/02/2026

I have no idea about investing, but I think people overindex on technology displacing incumbents. Sure, once in a while you get a Kodak. But IBM, Oracle, Microsoft are still around. Good companies embrace new technologies and evolve with them. SaaS will prevail.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 04/02/2026

Numbers from January: # Fika 775 new publications! 355 new subscriptions and 12k visits. # Handinger 19 customers 154eur MRR We have amazing things in the oven, can't wait to launch them!

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 28/01/2026

Men would rather write a blog post than go to therapy, but you can do both. I just wrote the essay I've been wanting to write for a long time. The most personal one I've written. I talk about parent-child relationships and leaving your own company as a founder. paoramen.fika.bar/i-left-my-ow...

paoramen.fika.bar

I left my own startup to not become my father.

I failed. I am back at work.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 27/01/2026

Writing tip #18 Opening with a pronoun delays meaning and creates tension. That move is called prolepsis. It’s everywhere in speech, and striking in writing. Use it to land strong first sentences.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 25/01/2026

A developer can cost you ~$50 an hour. That's... a lot of Opus 4.5 tokens. The real change on the tech industry is going to be when business owners realize how to leverage this effectively.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 11/01/2026

The only thing a founder should fear is the company dying (most likely). Everything else is a distraction. Seat belts? Sure they are important. Scientifically proven. But you are flying a plane across the ocean, low on fuel, and you don't even know how to fly.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 08/01/2026

Writing tip #17 Act don't tell. Don't describe a feeling, use an action instead.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 07/01/2026

Writing tip #16 Juxtapose contrasting ideas in a parallel structure. This is often used to presenting an "obvious" truth in an impactful way.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 02/01/2026

December wasn’t great at Fika. We had fewer posts and visits than planned. I could blame seasonality (the mother of all excuses), but honestly, we’re still figuring things out: the product, the positioning, the channels... Send hugs.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 31/12/2025

Writing tip #15 Slice sentences sharply across expectation and payoff. It creates momentum.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 28/12/2025

Unsolicited life advice: When you travel to a country with a lower cost of living than the US (which is most of them), cancel your SaaS subscriptions and re-subscribe from there.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 26/12/2025

Writing tip #14 Dialogue is action disguised as talk. Don't describe the scene, let the characters verbalize it.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 22/12/2025

Writing tip #13 Polyptotons are a neat trick used by Jesus, Shakespeare, and John Lennon, in that order. Repeat a root word in different grammatical forms to make sentences more memorable. PS: The polyptoton chapter in Elements of Eloquence is one of the most hilarious texts I have ever read.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 19/12/2025

Writing tip #12 Verbs trapped as nouns suck life out of sentences.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 18/12/2025

Writing tip #11 Even small paragraphs can be stories.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 17/12/2025

Writing tip #10 Instead of describing, snap a picture. Like in photography, good writing is an act of noticing.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 17/12/2025

Unique opportunity to win the prestigious “I was once right on the Internet” prize. We just launched an A/B test. Which variant wins? Why?

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 16/12/2025

Writing tip #9 Stop hedging your words. If you want to say something, say it without “sort of”, “kind of”, “maybe”. Hard one for me. I usually write to explore, so I’m never fully sure of my own words.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 16/12/2025

“Talk to users,” they say. Sure. Nothing can hurt me. Six weeks later, I’m still emotionally recovering.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 15/12/2025

Writing tip #8 Specific nouns are easier to visualize than abstract ones.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 14/12/2025

What do people use for b2c drip campaigns? I just want basic email automation based on customer data, that is cheap and simple enough.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 12/12/2025

Writing tip #7 Surprise the reader to keep them engaged. Never let them know what you will say next.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 11/12/2025

Writing tip #6 ~Today I would like to talk about~ the warm up cough. Just say what you want to say. Don't foreplay with your readers.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 10/12/2025

Writing tip #5 Endings are memory points. Weight goes last.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 08/12/2025

Writing tip #4 Using similar grammatical patterns for similar ideas, creates flow and cohesion.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 05/12/2025

Writing tip #3 Sharp moments deserve short sentences. Slow moments deserve longer ones. Rhythm reveals meaning.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 04/12/2025

Writing tip #2 “To be” sentences are boring. Swap them for actions that move.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 03/12/2025

Writing is a skill you can brute force. While building Fika, I’m teaching myself to write by obsessively reading, listening, and dissecting everything I can. For the next 30 days, I’ll share what I'm learning, one writing tip per day. Writing tip #1 Prefer concrete verbs over abstract summaries.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 01/12/2025

I've noticed people use AI in two completely different ways: 1. Draw the two circles 2. Draw the rest of the fucking owl I'm fully convinced the first one wins every time. When you draw the circles yourself, you’re forced to think. Otherwise, you just keep pulling the lever hoping for a jackpot.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 26/11/2025

I've just finished my third and final article about hiring. This one is about scaling recruiting, operationally. Most teams struggle because their process can’t handle volume. So I break down: • interview bandwidth • conversion rates • how to model org charts paoramen.fika.bar/how-to-scale...

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 20/11/2025

One of the hardest parts of building Fika has been letting go. I spent two years shaping a side project, and now I’m throwing most of it away because Fika is becoming something different. It hurts more than I expected. You get irrationally attached to old decisions without noticing.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 12/11/2025

I just wrote my most detailed article ever. It breaks down the entire recruiting pipeline I used to hire 150+ engineers with a single recruiter. From lead generation to closing: every step, tricks, questions, templates... If you think hiring engineers is hard, read this!

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 12/11/2025

"Generative AI is so good, you can't tell anymore what images are real or not" I present you, the 4x3 rubik cube.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 11/11/2025

I've assembled the weirdest founding team: Two engineers and a growth hacker. Why? Because in 2025, building products is cheap but attention is expensive. So my hypothesis is that you need: - one engineer building product - one engineer building growth - one person harnessing the attention markets

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 10/11/2025

I want more human-written content on the Internet. So bad that I hand-drew this entire animation, frame by frame, just to make you click on the damn button.

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Pao Ramen @paoramen.com · 06/11/2025

In the last two years, the #1 thing people have asked me was how I hired at Factorial. I've shared my playbook again and again, so I decided to write it once and for all. It got… long. So I turned it into a 3-chapter series on Fika. Enjoy! paoramen.fika.bar/the-talent-m...

paoramen.fika.bar

The Talent Machine

A predictable recruiting playbook for technical roles.

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