The Next Next: Update #10
The roller coaster of a pre-product market fit public walkabout
I am feeling a little reflective this week.
When I started focusing on climate change 6.5 years ago, there were very few voices in startup-land writing and talking about it. Now, as I am spending a bunch of time focused on AI, it seems that there are very few voices in startup-land NOT writing and talking about it.
That being said, while there is certainly a lot of noise and grift, it is clear to me that underneath all of that something profound is happening. It seems we are likely over-estimating the impact in the next 12 months and under-estimating the impact in 5-10 years. All that to say that, while it seems like it might be harder for me and my journey to rise above the noise this time around (though maybe it was hard in climate too, I can’t recall!), I am fully convicted that I am in the right spot and heading down the right path. I also need to remind myself that this isn’t a media company at all. I have no plans to ever monetize the podcast/newsletter, they are simply the content exhaust from the journey, which is where the real value lies. And while I don’t get a ton of inbound so far, when I do it tends to be extremely high quality, which I will take as a win!
Another thing I am wrestling with is that it seems clear so far that AI will help automate much of the mundane tasks that have weighed us down historically across a wide range of disciplines. This will increase the accessibility of many services by lowering the price, and also will mean that these offerings can get built with less resources and less capital. All of that sounds amazing, except what I am less sure about is how the businesses that create these products will benefit. I get that they can iterate faster and get more done, but as the barriers keep getting lower for them, they do for all of their competitors as well. It will mean any time there is a new innovation or business model, copycats will emerge faster, moats will be smaller and less durable, and pricing pressure will kick in sooner and in a more pronounced way. I see how AI can remove mundane tasks, but I am having a harder time seeing how it can be value accretive. At least not yet. Not to mention all the platform risk as the underlying LLMs continue to duke it out in their own arms race!
Now, getting into it, here are the updates from this week…..
Podcast:
The pod continues to crank. It feels good to be back on the mic, and I am energized by all of the great guests I am learning from. I am also steeped in the back-end production process, and have been doing it all myself. It is becoming clear to me that AI could not just automate little pieces of it, but could automate large swaths of this process. I am in the early phases of defining an action plan for how to get started here, and mapping towards a larger game plan. Getting closer every week!
It is a very exciting direction in terms of how much it will free up my time from the mundane, how much more it will allow me to focus on the strategic stuff I love, and how much it will help educate me on how workflow automation with AI works in the process! And while I certainly am not committed it will head in this direction, one path would be that after I build out this toolset internally, I could productize it for others to benefit from (and for me to have the beginnings of a business model).
My thoughts on resourcing are also continuing to evolve. While I get that there is great value in me getting my hands dirty with the tools, I heard from someone recently that how they found the most success in their firm was getting some interns to shadow the team and learn their processes, get their hands dirty with the latest AI tools, and educate the team on what elements of their processes could be automated and where to start. What I like about this approach is it keeps the core team (in this case, me!) focused on their ongoing deliverables, while still giving the AI exploration the dedicated attention it warrants. The downside, of course, is that it would be an excuse to not get my hands dirty, when I know I really should. Maybe a compromise is the equivalent of an AI personal trainer/coach/pair programmer to hold my hand and keep me accountable. More to come as I sort through it. And I have a pair programming session set for Friday with an old Runkeeper PM (hi Paul!), that we may even be recording and publishing. Let’s see how that goes! The goal is to get the first agent out the door.
Two new episodes of the pod shipped this week, and they were both fantastic:
This one with Sahil Lavingia, in which he gets into the seasons of his founder journey, how much they have been inwardly-driven vs externally-driven, the season he is entering now, and the role AI is playing in helping enable it. It can be found on spotify, apple, and youtube (which is new for TNN!)
And this one, with Chris Savage, the co-founder & CEO of Wistia. In this one, Chris goes through how they started Wistia right out of school, how they were profitable early but let outside voices convince them to grow recklessly and lose focus, how they turned down several buyout offers and raised a bunch of debt to regain focus and independence, and where they are heading now, given they are profitable, independent, focused, and full of ambition for the long haul. Not to mention how they are using AI and plan to directionally. It can be found on spotify, apple, and youtube.
Fogey Founders:
While it feels disjoint and defocusing to keep pushing along my crazy TV series idea, I can’t shake it and am going to keep pushing this one along in parallel. I had a great discussion with Gregg Spiridellis of JibJab fame (thanks Gregg!), and he encouraged me to 1) start simple with my pod setup in a room so I am equipped to pursue it with me, myself, and I, and 2) make it centered around the crazy AI news cycle, by publishing skits quickly when timely news comes out. I really liked both of those ideas.
I continue to have conviction that Fogey Founders are a demographic that isn’t being spoken to at the moment. And I also think doing so in a satirical way would be both fun and also funny (not to mention strategic for the more serious TNN journey). And I also think that AI can help! What I have less confidence in is that I am even remotely funny. My wife thinks it is a sign of a big ego that I am even willing to try to be a comedian with zero experience. We’ll see what happens here, but let’s just say I am reading a comedy book and trying to psyche myself up! I have a working session w/ a very experienced showrunner Friday as well, which I am also excited about (hi Mary!).
Here are my asks for this week:
Intros to people who have tackled workflow automation effectively, either from the subject mastery side, the AI tooling side, or both.
Intros to people who are at the top of their game in a given craft, NOT yet leaning into AI, and feeling paranoid and behind, like they really should.
Intros to smart startup types working on AI tooling, using AI tooling, or investing in AI tooling.
Anyone else who is thinking about and working on stuff I covered above, you should reach out too!
Thanks for listening! Writing this every week is like therapy. Until next week!
Jason