I spent the last week in San Francisco meeting founders, CEOs, and people at the frontier of AI.
Some observations I thought were worth sharing:
1. There’s a massive AI gold rush, and everyone knows. I met founders from London, Berlin, Croatia, and a dozen other countries who flew in to raise money and find customers.
2. Founders are raising venture capital to build personal brands on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. If the product fails, they can promote other products or become full-time creators. Career insurance.
3. AI influencers are PRINTING money. I heard of creators with 100,000 followers making $1M a year. AI companies have more cash than channels, and nearly every tech and career influencer I know has pivoted to AI.
4. AI companies are sponsoring billboards, buses, cafes, and crazy parties. AI marketing spend is insane right now.
5. But standing out has never been harder. There are 100 CRMs, 100 event planning tools, and 100 AI SDRs. When anyone can build the product, branding and storytelling decide the winner.
6. B2A (business to agents) is the new B2B. Marketers now create content and design products to sell to agents. Have you ever read a blog post meant for agents? It’s a little dystopian.
7. Many founders have a doomer AI mindset: pessimistic about the future, optimistic about their company. The people closest to the technology are often the most paranoid.
8. Company “aura” is a hot topic. CEOs are obsessed with making their companies sexy enough to attract top talent. With more missionaries than mercenaries, the founder’s vision matters more than ever.
9. I met so many people stuck in the abyss: wealthy enough to be choosy about their careers, not wealthy enough to stop working. Most are figuring out what’s next in the AI world.
10. Everyone is selling data. It’s not unusual to hear of a founder selling their company’s Slack data for half a million dollars.
11. Startup creation is becoming a factory: Y Combinator, HF0, Founders Inc. I visited a Founders Inc demo day that felt like a high school science fair, but with companies instead of volcanoes. Some founders were 16 and had already raised venture money.
12. Hacker houses are booming because founders want to compress time. At one, founders gave themselves six months to hit product-market fit. They eat, sleep, and work in the same house.
13. The gap between SF and everywhere else keeps widening. People here are more AI-pilled than ever, yet most people outside tech hubs have never heard of Instinct.
14. SF might be the only place where saying you work at Google makes people question your judgment. As in, why aren’t you building something?
15. The new flex is tiny teams. Gamma does $100M+ in revenue with 50 employees ($2M per employee). Five years ago, headcount was the flex.
I love my trips to SF. Thank you to everyone who welcomed me and showed me around.
Happy to be back home.
See you soon!
