Follow the Money: understand payments and how money moves
Oct 2026I got really curious about payments and built Follow the Money as a public good for anyone else interested in the capital stack and how money moves. The industry is convoluted and opaque. Like tokenization, there are a lot of intermediaries and variances between licenses, geographies, and regulations. This website would not have been possible in its current state without fact checks and audits from fintech and payment leaders. I initially shared a teaser on X and received a lot of helpful feedback that shaped the final website you see today.
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sponsor me: the sponsorship index
Sep 2026I noticed a trend of people turning their bodies, clothing, and possessions into ad space. It started with Vincent letting companies put their logos on his laptop. Marc Lou then raised a record $112,000 by advertising his body for a HYROX competition. This led to many other creators selling ad space for company logos on clothes, bicycles, cars, and more. I was reminded of early experiments when people sold tattoo space on their bodies on eBay. I thought about how diminishing returns correlate with diminishing novelty and found this trend resurgence on X interesting.
The project was built with a combination of Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, and Grok.
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Unicorn gear: first ecommerce store
2016 to 2018Right after college, I started an ecom business with my roommate. It started as dropshipping. First, we set up a Shopify store, designed a logo, and hooked up Oberlo to AliExpress for dropshipping. I had limited Photoshop skills back then and manipulated an existing logo I found on Google Images. Then we went full on private labeling, packed bags to Asia, and toured 3 factories in Shenzhen.
We private labeled beanies with built-in Bluetooth speakers. Everything was learned from YouTube videos, blogs, and asking friends.
A lot goes into building a brand from scratch. Beyond the operational, supply chain, and inventory management, all this was learned from content online:
Optimizing the Shopify store
Facebook ads
Copywriting
Photoshop for product lays and content
SEO
Google AdWords and Shopping
Email marketing
(No AI tools back then!)
Not to mention the brand identity and positioning. We built target personas, reworked USPs, and asked friends for feedback.
The result: about 60 units sold, and we only made back 50% of the cost of the initial order. Failure by a business sense.
Looking back at this now, there was so much learned:
We were selling a seasonal, non-evergreen product.
Audience was small. Not everyone is cold, wears beanies, or does snow sports.
Our initial copy and ads were too feature focused: "latest Bluetooth technology" vs. "a concert-level listening experience that feels like floating on clouds".
Not enough validation and product feedback: friends and family were too nice and did not give honest feedback.
Most importantly, it led me to where I am today. Growth and digital marketing is so much fun. Marketing principles are the same today. But there are loads of new tools to use, problems to solve, and stories to share.
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