logo
episode-header-image
Nov 21
43m 33s

Context Engineering: The Secret Behind $...

Aakash Gupta
About this episode

Today’s Episode

Why do your prompts keep failing?

You write the perfect prompt. The AI spits out garbage. You tweak. You iterate. You spend hours getting mediocre results.

XK built Cues to $10M ARR in 60 days with zero VC funding and zero advertising. Today, he’s dropping the complete playbook:

-----

Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.

Brought to you by:

Reforge http://reforge.com/aakash

-----

Key takeaways:

1. Context engineering beats prompting - One prompt won't work. Like hiring someone who knows nothing about your company—impossible to get results in 5 seconds. Accumulate context, build knowledge base, let AI know you over time. Combines system prompts, user prompts, memory, and RAG.2. The Mom analogy - Your mom knows your preferences, goals (grow taller for basketball), what makes you happy. She doesn't need detailed instructions. That's context engineering. AI that knows you creates better results and positive loops.3. Threads growth hack - Created hundreds of accounts posting use cases daily. Zero ad spend. Why it works: Threads gives traffic generously, less crowded than X, no creator hierarchy. Result: 3M impressions/month, hundreds of daily visits. Targeted Taiwan/Hong Kong markets.4. MVO before MVP - Traditional: Feature → PRD → Design → Ship. Xiankun's way: Get model output right FIRST. Use RAG, prompting, fine-tuning for Minimal Viable Output. Then productize. "If no desired outputs, don't spend time productizing."5. Visual context engineering - Use spatial tools: draw squares, graphs, sketches. AI understands spatial relationships. Unlike ChatGPT where files disappear, Kuse gives 2D space to store/reuse. Graphic operating system for AI that compounds.6. The pivot story - Started as design agent. Users uploaded documents instead. Knowledge base usage far exceeded design. Pivoted to horizontal knowledge-based AI. Listen to your users.7. Why X sucks for growth - Structured creator hierarchy. Can't farm traffic without famous connections. Good for VC fundraising, terrible for user acquisition. Threads and Instagram are underserved with real users.8. Compounding context power - Regular chatbots: one-off, context disappears. Kuse: processes files when you're away, pre-prepares everything. Like having ingredients ready vs ordering each time. Each interaction improves.9. Trading company origin - Co-founded YC company, created trading company, made money, funded Kuse with profits. Built without VC pressure. "Entrepreneurship is a game of focus." Building without chasing VC gives fresh perspective.10. Future vision: productivity playground - "Not building productivity tool, building playground." When AI takes jobs (2030-2040), people need fulfillment. Kuse is amusement park where people pretend to work, feel satisfaction. Going to pure pleasure, not efficiency.

----

Where to Find Xiankun Wu

* LinkedIn

* Threads

* Company

----

Related Content

Podcasts:

* We Built an AI Employee in 62 mins

* Conversation with the CEO and Founder of Bolt

* This $20M AI Founder Is Challenging Elon and Sam Altman | Roy Lee, Cluely

Newsletters:

* Context Engineering Guide

* Prompt Engineering in 2025

* How to become an AI Product Manager

----

PS. Please subscribe on YouTube and follow on Apple & Spotify. It helps!

----

If you want to advertise, email productgrowthppp at gmail.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe
Up next
Nov 19
How to Land an AI PM Job: Complete Roadmap from Hamza Farooq
<p>Today’s Episode</p><p>The salary for AI PMs is skyrocketing.</p><p>Hamza Farooq works with companies like Home Depot, Trip Adviser, and Jack in the Box on their AI strategy. He teaches AI PM courses at Stanford, UCLA, and Maven.</p><p>Today, he’s giving you the complete 6-mont ... Show More
28m 44s
Nov 16
I put the 5 best AI prototyping tools to the test with Magic Patterns CEO Alex Danilowicz
<p>Today’s Episode</p><p>Every PM needs to master AI prototyping in 2025.</p><p>But which tool should you use? And how do you actually prototype effectively?</p><p>Alex Danilowicz built Magic Patterns to $1M in revenue in 6 months. Today, we’re putting his tool against the compet ... Show More
41m 36s
Nov 9
How to Engineer Delight Into AI Products: The Complete Playbook from Spotify & Google PM Nesrine Changuel
Today’s EpisodeWhy do some AI products feel like magic while others feel like work?You shipped. It works. Your metrics show “success.”But users aren’t coming back. They’re not telling friends. And next quarter, they’ll switch to the competitor with a better model.Nesrine Changuel ... Show More
1h 20m
Recommended Episodes
Nov 2024
Becoming an AI PM | Aman Khan (Arize AI, ex-Spotify, Apple, Cruise)
<p><strong>Aman Khan</strong> is Director of Product at Arize AI, an observability company for AI engineers at companies like Uber, Instacart, and Discord. Previously he was an AI Product Manager at Spotify on the ML Platform team, enabling hundreds of engineers to build and ship ... Show More
1h 17m
Sep 7
How AI is reshaping the product role | Oji and Ezinne Udezue
Ezinne and Oji Udezue have over 50 years of combined product leadership experience at Microsoft, Twitter, Atlassian, WP Engine, Typeform, and Calendly. They’ve witnessed every major shift in product management, and, despite their seniority, they’re taking beginner AI courses and ... Show More
1h 18m
Jul 2025
How I'm Building a Zero-Employee Business with AI
Want to Automate your work with AI? Get the playbook here: https://clickhubspot.com/wgk Episode 66: Can you really build a zero-employee business with AI? Nathan Lands (https://x.com/NathanLands) sits down with John Rush (https://x.com/johnrushx), founder and self-proclaimed buil ... Show More
46 m
Aug 28
How 80,000 companies build with AI: products as organisms, the death of org charts, and why agents will outnumber employees by 2026 | Asha Sharma (CVP of AI Platform at Microsoft)
Asha Sharma leads AI product strategy at Microsoft, where she works with thousands of companies building AI products and has unique visibility into what’s working (and what’s not) across more than 15,000 startups and enterprises. Before Microsoft, Asha was COO at Instacart, and V ... Show More
57m 11s
Aug 31
How we restructured Airtable’s entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)
Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, the no-code platform valued at around $12 billion. After a viral tweet declared “Airtable is dead” based on incorrect data, Howie led a radical transformation: reorganizing the entire company around AI, becoming an “IC CEO” who cod ... Show More
1h 40m
Jul 2025
He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor on the future of careers, coding, agents, and more
Bret Taylor’s legendary career includes being CTO of Meta, co-CEO of Salesforce, chairman of the board at OpenAI (yes, during that drama), co-creating both Google Maps and the Like button, and founding three companies. Today he’s the founder and CEO of Sierra, an AI agent company ... Show More
1h 28m
Sep 21
From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author)
Julie Zhuo is the former VP and Head of Design at Facebook (now Meta), author of the bestselling book The Making of a Manager, and co-founder of Sundial, an AI-powered data analysis company. Also, my first-ever podcast guest over 3 years ago!In our conversation, we discuss:1. The ... Show More
1h 36m
Jul 2025
Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo
Maor Shlomo is the founder of Base44, an AI-powered app builder that he bootstrapped to an over $80 million acquisition by Wix in just six months. As a solo founder (with severe ADHD), he hit $1 million ARR just three weeks after launch and grew the product to more than 400,000 u ... Show More
1h 31m
Mar 2025
How to win in the AI era: Ship a feature every week, embrace technical debt, ruthlessly cut scope, and create magic your competitors can't copy | Gaurav Misra (CEO and co-founder of Captions)
<p><strong>Gaurav Misra</strong> is the co-founder and CEO of Captions, an AI-powered video creation company and one of the most successful consumer AI products in the world today. Previously he was a product leader at Snap, where he created the design engineering function and sp ... Show More
1h 25m
Jul 2025
The AI-native startup: 5 products, 7-figure revenue, 100% AI-written code | Dan Shipper (co-founder/CEO of Every)
Dan Shipper is the co-founder and CEO of Every. With just 15 people, Every publishes a daily AI newsletter, ships multiple AI products, and operates a million-dollar-a-year consulting arm—all while their engineers write virtually zero code. It’s the most radical example of AI-fir ... Show More
1h 34m