# Kevin Kelly’s *A Thousand True Fans* Leads Today’s Organic Recommendations

*By Recommended Reading from Tech Founders • June 28, 2026*

Two authentic recommendations cleared the filter: Paul Erlang tied Kevin Kelly’s A Thousand True Fans to a concrete feedback-driven growth loop, while Patrick O'Shaughnessy shared David Bessis’s Attention is All We Have with a direct endorsement. The brief prioritizes the resource that came with the clearest practical takeaway.

## What passed the filter

Two recommendations cleared the authenticity filter today. The stronger signal came from Paul Erlang, who referenced Kevin Kelly’s *A Thousand True Fans* while answering how consumer founders should reach their first thousand users [^1]. Patrick O'Shaughnessy added a simpler but still genuine recommendation of David Bessis’s *Attention is All We Have*, saying he "Really enjoyed reading this" and linking directly to it [^2].

## Most compelling recommendation

### *A Thousand True Fans*
- **Content type:** Essay
- **Author/creator:** Kevin Kelly
- **Link/URL:** Not provided in the source notes
- **Who recommended it:** Paul Erlang, co-founder and CEO of FOMO
- **Key takeaway:** Keep talking to early users and iterating on their feedback as you move from 10 users to 100 to 1,000 [^1]
- **Why it matters:** Erlang connected the essay to a specific product-building loop: FOMO gave passionate users early access to its web app, then used their feedback to improve it quickly [^1]

> "Talk to them. You need to keep iterating until you have 10 people, 100 people, a thousand people using it." [^1]

Erlang said the web app became "probably twice as good just in that week" because early users were passionate and willing to give rapid feedback [^1].


[![How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Z3nyCnsMMog/hqdefault.jpg)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z3nyCnsMMog&t=263)
*How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong (4:23)*


## Also worth saving

### *Attention is All We Have*
- **Content type:** Article
- **Author/creator:** David Bessis
- **Link/URL:** [open.substack.com/pub/davidbessis/p/attention-is-all-we-have?r=1qfvl3&utm_medium=ios](https://open.substack.com/pub/davidbessis/p/attention-is-all-we-have?r=1qfvl3&utm_medium=ios) [^2]
- **Who recommended it:** Patrick O'Shaughnessy
- **Key takeaway:** O'Shaughnessy said he "Really enjoyed reading this" [^2]
- **Why it matters:** This is a clean, direct recommendation with the exact article link attached, making it easy to save even though the source note does not include a fuller explanation of what stood out to him [^2]

## If you only save one

Save *A Thousand True Fans* first. It was the only recommendation today that came with a concrete framework for founder behavior—talk to passionate early users, ship to them early, and iterate from their feedback [^1].

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### Sources

[^1]: [How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3nyCnsMMog)
[^2]: [𝕏 post by @patrick_oshag](https://x.com/patrick_oshag/status/2071048392390897726)