🎤 The SWIPES Email (Friday, February 20th, 2026)

Friday, February 20th, 2026 ​​​​​​
Sponsor: Get a free year of ​Framer​ for early-stage founders. Use ​Kit​ for sending emails and building newsletters.

Swipe:

Sometime an effective ad is SO simple, like this one for protein bars:

[Headline]
[Sub-headline with details]
[Eye catching picture]

The thing I noticed in this headline was the word "decadent" which for some reason was an interesting choice and caught my attention!

Wisdom:

Screen time isn't inherently bad, but when you watch something the media does all the work for your brain.

But when you READ something, your brain ignites with activity! This picture shows that:

I read a lot of fiction books before I go to bed, and it's cool how your brain "builds worlds" in your head when you read something with no images or video attached.

Interesting:

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One of the top converting versions of our sales page was made on Framer:

This was all made with Framer, even with live wins and post updates from my community on every load.

A thing I like about ​Framer​ is you can select a good looking template and just build off that. Just add titles, copy, images...and your website is ready (including mobile version automatically).

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Picture:

This sketch shows how different types of automation make tasks that take a lot of people, start taking FEWER people.

On a manual level everything takes a lot of people. The simple act of doing some book keeping for a company would require many steps and people if you did everything manually.

You can further automate many things with software tools, enabled by computers and the internet, reducing the amount of people you need for it.

You can then further reduce headcount by using contractors from around the world to help you do tasks you don't want to hire for.

Then AI takes it to the next step and starts doing a lot of things itself, even further reducing needed headcount for a task.

Historically automation doesn't really kill jobs, but rather kills tasks.

Like accountants are still around after the inventing of the spreadsheet and account software, but the actual tasks they perform are vastly different than 100 years ago.

Essay:

Every cause has some effect. But what many people don't look ahead to is the 2nd order effects, 3rd order effects and further.

I saw this cool image on Contrarian Thinking:

So when you make a change, something happens, but it's much harder to see what will happen down the line.

• 1st order: The immediate result.
• 2nd order: What happens because of that result.
• 3rd order: Downstream ripple effects.
• 4th order: Downstream ripple effects continue.

A classic example is rent control. This happens all over the world and it backfires in the longrun everytime:

1st: Rent cheaper for tenants.
2nd: Landlords stop building/maintaining.
3rd: Housing shortage happens.
4th: Housing is now hard to find and crappier.

But this happens everywhere, like I see it happening with AI writing right now:

1st: Writing is easier/faster.
2nd: Content explosion happens.
3rd: Average quality drops and trust declines.
4th: Just putting out any old content doesn't work.

It's always good to try to figure out the 3rd and 4th order results of actions, because you can "kind of" predict what will happen in the future.

Splurge:

Spend some time watching this interview with one of my bestest buddies Noah Kagan! He talks about how AppSumo is dealing with AI (it's flipped the equation for software deals), becoming a dad, and the future of work as automation gets better and better:

Hope you have a great weekend,
Sincerely,
Neville Medhora