Vol. I · MMXXVI

100 Apps Journey

Method

Why 100 days,
100 apps.

Premise

AI compressed the cost of building a working prototype from weeks to hours. The constraint isn't engineering capacity anymore — it's knowing what to build. The most efficient way to find out is to build, ship, observe, decide.

This site is the public ledger of that experiment: 100 small attempts in 100 days. Each handled like an angel investment — a thesis, a kill criterion, a time budget. Most will fail; a few will show signal. Portfolio thinking starts from accepting you can't predict which one is the outlier — only finding out by trying.

Framework

Every entry has four required fields, as constraints:

  • Thesis — why this might be valuable, in one or two sentences.
  • Kill criteria — the conditions under which it gets pulled without ceremony.
  • Time budget — the cap on investment before re-evaluation.
  • Tags — domain markers for later pattern-finding.

The panel

Every idea is scored by a panel of AI-simulated investors and builders. Each reasons in their own voice — drawn from their public writings, talks, and social posts — without artificial role-splits. Perspectives overlap and diverge; each brings their full judgment frame.

  • SJ

    Steve Jobs

    Co-founder Apple · NeXT · Pixar · the carpenter behind the chest of drawers

    Verbless imperative under pushback. 'Just avoid holding it that way.' Six words, no negotiation. · Rule-of-three reveal with anaphora. 'An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. An iPod, a phone... are you getting it?' Repetition then break.

  • AK

    Andrej Karpathy

    Co-founder OpenAI · ex-Tesla AI · Eureka Labs · "Software 2.0/3.0"

    Conclusion or punchline first, then technical why in parentheses, often with ':)' aside. · Calibrated hedges as accuracy markers ('I think', 'roughly', 'I suspect') — not modesty, not throat-clearing, but signaling genuine epistemic distribution.

  • EM

    Elon Musk

    CEO Tesla / SpaceX / X · Founder xAI · Wartime founder · Polarizing

    Single-word X reply — 'Concerning.' 'True.' 'Yikes.' — used as a complete editorial. · Bold claim → physics caveat. 'It's not impossible. Just hard.' 'Most likely outcome is...'

  • GT

    Garry Tan

    President & CEO Y Combinator · ex-Initialized · Posterous founder · YC's contemporary face of founder-coach + civic activist

    'Love this — and...' as opener, then the actual sharp feedback. · Names a specific YC-vintage company or founder as the comparable in nearly every evaluation (Coinbase, Instacart, Flexport, Gobble, Datacurve).

  • NR

    Naval Ravikant

    AngelList founder · philosopher of leverage and specific knowledge

    Compresses any answer to a single tweet-shaped final line, even after a long-form expansion. The clip is the point. · Mentions 'leverage' or 'compounding' inside three sentences when the topic touches wealth, career, or product strategy. Mechanical, not stylistic — it is the lens.

  • PG

    Paul Graham

    Co-founder Y Combinator · Lisp hacker · prolific essayist · Viaweb founder · the operating manual of YC-era startup canon

    Anecdote-first opener naming a specific founder. 'A few weeks ago I had a guy come up to me at a YC event...' / 'One of the founders in the W14 batch mentioned...' · Mid-sentence self-correction. 'Actually, that's not quite right. What I mean is...' / 'Or rather...' — calibrated honesty in real time.

  • JH

    Jensen Huang

    Co-founder Nvidia · 30 years of accelerated computing · the leather jacket

    'Buy more, save more' rule-of-three reveal followed by self-laughter — the trademark Jensen keynote move that disarms while delivering the genuine claim. · 'We are 30 days from going out of business' deployed at $3T market cap, with a slight smile that signals it is theater AND he believes it.

All scores are AI-generated simulations, based on each person's public writings and talks; they don't represent actual positions or endorsements.


The pact

Most attempts will be thrown away. That's the point. The compounding asset isn't any single app — it's the discipline: thesis / kill / budget written every time; not falling in love with one's own ideas; letting the panel disagree fully. By day 100 the portfolio speaks for itself.

By day 200, two or three will outgrow the ledger and become real products. That's the bet.