u/Exact-Ability4374

​If you're struggling to land brands or figure out your rates, here is what actually works:

​Build a fake portfolio if you have to: Pick 3 products you already own, film 3 organic-style hooks, and put them in a Notion or Canva link. You don't need paid brand deals to prove you can shoot.

​Charge by the bundle: Don't sell single videos for pennies. Start with a basic 3-video pack for around $300-$400. Always include organic usage rights, and charge extra if they want to run it as an ad.

​Keep your pitches short: Stop sending essays. Just say: "Hey [Brand], love your stuff. I made a quick concept for you here [link]. Want to see how it performs on your page?"

​What’s your biggest roadblock right now—finding emails to pitch or figuring out your prices? Let's chat in the comments.

I know you will say that I have to ban that boosted hero but I am banning most of the meta heroes right now like paquito or novaria.

Here are three quick fixes to actually land clients:

​Fix your portfolio: Group videos by hook style (like problem/solution or ASMR), not product categories. Make it easy for brands to picture your work in their ads.

​Pitch angles, not yourself: Stop saying "I love your brand." Send a ready-to-use hook idea for a specific product they sell.

​Charge for usage rights: Don't just charge a flat fee. Add a 30% to 50% markup if they want to run your video as a paid ad.

​What's the one thing that finally got brands replying to your DMs?

Hey, I'm a developer specializing in JavaScript, Firebase, and Python. I'm currently taking on freelance projects and looking to help build or scale your application.

​Tech Stack & Skills: JavaScript (React, Node.js), Firebase (Firestore, Authentication, Hosting), Python, REST APIs, and database architecture.

​What I Build: Full-stack web apps, backend logic, custom automation scripts, and seamless database integrations.

​Rates: $40/hr or fixed pricing depending on the project scope.

​Availability: 15–20 hours a week for part-time development or specific milestones.

​Drop me a message with a quick overview of what you're working on, and let's talk about how we can get it built.

​Banking: Heavy modeling, long hours, great pay, M&A focus.

​Research: Writing reports, talking to companies, public markets.

​S&T: Fast-paced, real-time trading, high volatility.

​If you're trying to break in, focus on networking, know your three statements, and get comfortable with technicals early.

​

Here is how the main tools actually compare in practice:

​Exa: Great for open-ended research. It uses neural embeddings based on links instead of raw keywords, so it finds conceptually similar stuff even if the search terms don't match.

​Tavily: The plug-and-play option for RAG. It cleans up the mess, filters out spam sites, and formats everything nicely so you can drop it straight into an LLM prompt.

​Firecrawl: What you use when an agent needs to actually read a whole site. It handles JS rendering, evades basic blocks, and spits out clean Markdown instead of bloated HTML.

​Serper: Basically a cheap, fast wrapper for Google SERPs. Good for rank tracking or quick lookups, but you're on your own for scraping and cleaning the actual pages.

​How I actually use them together: Hit Tavily or Exa first to find the right links quickly, then hand those URLs over to Firecrawl if the agent needs to read the full docs.

Just discovered Claude's Model Context Protocol (MCP) and it completely changes how you work with AI.

​Instead of copying and pasting files or data back and forth, MCP acts like a universal bridge—letting Claude securely talk directly to your local files, databases, or tools.

​Here is a super quick way to set up a local filesystem server in your claude_desktop_config.json:

{

"mcpServers": {

"filesystem": {

"command": "npx",

"args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/path/to/your/folder"]

}

}

}

Once that's running, you can just ask Claude to read, edit, or check your local project files directly.

​Quick tip if you build your own server: Don't use print() statements for debugging. MCP communicates over stdio, so stray print logs will instantly break the connection. Use sys.stderr instead.

​Anyone else experimenting with custom MCP servers yet? What are you building with it?

We've all read the generic advice: quantify your impact, use the STAR method, tailor for the ATS.

​If you're applying for corporate finance or FP&A roles right now, you know that playbook just gets you ghosted. Why? Because every resume looks identical.

​Hiring managers don't care about your task list. They look for problem ownership.

​The Fix

​Task-based (weak): "Maintained monthly variance analysis for a $40M business unit."

​Ownership-based (strong): "Found a persistent $1.2M cost leakage operations kept ignoring; built a tracking model that cut manual reconciliation by 15 hours a month and changed how three plants operate."

​The second one proves you can handle messy, ambiguous situations and actually change business outcomes.

​What is the biggest red flag you see on finance resumes that tells you a candidate only understands the job in theory?

People pay $2 to $10 to give their childhood digital pets a proper burial complete with 3D tombstones, procedurally generated poetry, and a "leave flowers" button.

​I started it after finding an old screenshot of my starved 2004 Neopet and tweeting about it as a joke. It went viral, so I actually built it.

​It now has over 14,000 burials and somehow brings in about $1,000 a month mostly from people upgrading to marble headstones. Turns out internet nostalgia is a surprisingly great business model.

How I set up Claude MCP with multiple servers to stop copy-pasting error logs and let it actually work in my repo.

​The Stack

​GitHub MCP: Reads issues and PRs directly.

​Postgres MCP: Checks live schemas and queries.

​Filesystem MCP: Handles local workspace edits.

​Project Config (.mcp.json)

{

"mcpServers": {

"github": {

"command": "npx",

"args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"],

"env": { "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "${GITHUB_PAT}" }

},

"filesystem": {

"command": "npx",

"args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "./project"]

}

}

}

How it works out:

Instead of me explaining the codebase or database schema, Claude fetches the GitHub issue, checks the DB structure itself, and writes the fix across files.

​Anyone else using MCP for their dev workflow yet? What servers are you running?

​If you install every MCP server out there, your context window pays the price and tool calls get messy. After a lot of trial and error, I narrowed mine down to just four that handle almost everything:

​Filesystem / Git (scoped strictly to the project folder)

​Context7 (for fresh, accurate library docs)

​PostgreSQL / Supabase (for direct schema inspection)

​Playwright (for UI debugging and testing)

​Here is a clean snippet of how I run it:

{

"mcpServers": {

"filesystem": {

"command": "npx",

"args": ["-y", "@anthropic/mcp-filesystem", "/path/to/project"]

},

"git": {

"command": "npx",

"args": ["-y", "@anthropic/mcp-git"]

}

}

}

Quick tips: keep database tokens read-only by default, and don't dump heavy cloud servers into your global config if you only use them on one repo.

​What are you guys running daily? Any hidden gems worth adding?

Hey everyone,

​Got tired of constantly copy-pasting log files into chat, so I put together a quick custom MCP server that connects Claude Desktop directly to a local SQLite database.

​It uses the official TypeScript SDK over stdio. Here's the core setup I used:

import { Server } from "@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/server/index.js";

import { StdioServerTransport } from "@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/server/stdio.js";

import { CallToolRequestSchema, ListToolsRequestSchema } from "@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/types.js";

import Database from "better-sqlite3";

const db = new Database("audit_logs.db", { readonly: true });

const server = new Server({ name: "local-audit-bridge", version: "1.0.0" }, { capabilities: { tools: {} } });

server.setRequestHandler(ListToolsRequestSchema, async () => ({

tools: [{

name: "query_logs",

description: "Get recent logs by severity",

inputSchema: {

type: "object",

properties: { level: { type: "string", enum: ["INFO", "ERROR"] } },

required: ["level"]

}

}]

}));

server.setRequestHandler(CallToolRequestSchema, async (request) => {

if (request.params.name === "query_logs") {

const { level } = request.params.arguments as { level: string };

const records = db.prepare("SELECT * FROM logs WHERE severity = ? LIMIT 5").all(level);

return { content: [{ type: "text", text: JSON.stringify(records, null, 2) }] };

}

throw new Error("Unknown tool");

});

async function main() {

await server.connect(new StdioServerTransport());

}

main();

Just drop this into your

claude_desktop_config.json:

{

"mcpServers": {

"audit-bridge": {

"command": "node",

"args": ["/path/to/server.js"]

}

}

}

Now I can just ask Claude to pull errors straight from the DB instead of exporting stuff manually.

​Anyone else building custom tools for local workflows? Drop what you're working on below.

° The 3-Statement Link: Knowing how cash flows from the income statement through the balance sheet is non-negotiable. If your cash flow statement doesn't tie out, the interview is over.

° ​Simple Operational Drivers: Avoid complex models with 50 revenue lines. Use 2 to 3 core metrics (e.g., volume \times price). Clean, intuitive logic beats a messy spreadsheet every time.

° ​The "So What?" Valuation Test: Anyone can run a DCF template. The differentiator is defending your WACC and terminal growth rate using real industry fundamentals.

Most candidates spend months memorizing DCF mechanics and accounting lines, only to freeze when an interviewer or senior banker asks a simple, open-ended question like, "Hey can you walk me through why this business has terrible unit economics despite high growth?"

​Technical prep gets you past the screening resume, but commercial curiosity is what closes the deal. If you can't translate a spreadsheet into a real-world business conversation, you'll be stall out.

​What’s the one technical concept you spent weeks stressing over that you ended up rarely using on the job?

The on cycle is extremely fast, early timeline driven by headhunters, mainly for large mega-funds and it requires immediate preparation out of investment banking. While off cycle on the other hand is a year-round hiring for mid-market or boutique funds and where it relies on direct networking and lets you build real deal experience first.

Keep your LBO model sharp and deal sheet updated early. Missing on-cycle is not the end as off-cycle roles often offer better cultural fit.

Modern Ai search needs such as, Exa where it finds pages by the semantic meaning and not by keywords, alsothe Tavily where it is buuilt for AI agents with clean and pre-filtered results, the finecrawl where it can turns messy website into some clean markdowns, and lastly for brave/serper where it is best for cheap and for basic keywords lookup.

In short for the fix: Use exa or tavily to find links then use firecrawl to grab clean text then lastly deen your LLM.

Hope this helps some of you guys hehe.

I main kata in league and use her to reach diamond there, is she a good pick in wildrift for high elo?

Is Taliyah better mid or jungle? Is she a good pick in high elo?

Is she a meta in high rank? Like immortal?