The Next Next: Update #14

A potential initial business model?

For those of you tuning in for the first time, The Next Next is a ‘build in public’ type of journey from founder Jason Jacobs (me!) to explore 1) how I can build my next company differently (prioritizing health and family, not just work, while still building an ambitious and important company) and 2) how AI can help, and more broadly, how it will change how startups are built and funded.

There is this newsletter (subscribe here), which publishes weekly and chronicles the ground I covered that week, insights I’ve gleaned, topics I’m wrestling with, and where I plan to dig in the week following. And there’s also this podcast, which publishes twice a week, and explores these topics in-depth in a series of interview-style discussions with others who are well placed for me (and you!) to learn from.

The goal of this public learning journey is to have it evolve over time from a journey into a livelihood, to prove to myself and others that it is possible to ‘have your cake and eat it too’, and to help define a new playbook for how to build companies that inspires many other founders to follow suit and gives them a roadmap for how to get started.

If you want to catch up, the historical weekly updates are here:

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12, Week 13

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Another action-packed week in TNN-land.

Content

The content machine is *cranking*. I am loving learning this way, and the discussions for the pod are super energizing.

New episode this week were:

Ben and Ruiters from HYBRD (Spotify, Apple, YouTube). YC-backed fitness company w/ 4 co-founders, only one of which is technical, and all 4 are writing loads of code w/ AI! Super interesting to get this view from the trenches :)

Bharat Vasan from Intangible.ai (Spotify, Apple, YouTube). Many time founder, with a super experienced co-founder, taking a big swing at a no-code 3D creation tool for filmmakers and game designers that recently raised $4m to get going. Particularly insightful back and forth in this one on how those fields were doing before AI and the potential of AI to help (vs take all the jobs!).

Many, many more great episodes planned, just getting started here!

Connectivity

I am starting to facilitate more and more double opt-in intros as I get better connected in the space. This is via hand-to-hand combat today, but as I mentioned in my last update, I am starting to think through how to systematize that, as it is clear that people find it valuable. What’s cool is that a lot of the matchmaking today is between TNN show guests! And I am only a dozen episodes in, wait until I have hundreds. I’ve seen this movie before!

Not sure what form this systematized connectivity would take, but the goal would be to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing across a curated group of serious builders at the tip of the spear in this emerging space.

Team

One interesting thing happened, an old intern from Runkeeper, a seasoned engineer diving hard into AI tools, reached out and was interested in exploring potentially collaborating on TNN. This was the first discussion I have had with a potential collaborator. What it made me (and him!) realize is that I am too early. The pressure of having a partner I need to stay in alignment with, someone to keep busy working on fulfilling stuff, etc would be counterproductive during this early exploration phase when I am just trying to learn.

I still do want (and plan) to build some internal tooling (and likely eventually some products), but my current thought is any code that gets written in the near-term at TNN is for learning, not for commercial pursuits. Focus is paramount! Will keep him in the speed dial for later though, cuz at some point it will be time to build :)

On another note, I hired an AI executive assistant, Howie. $29/month, and so far, he’s doing great! I just copy him in and he checks my calendar, proposes times, and sends a meeting link. And knows the difference between 30 min zoom meetings and 1 hour pods, and sends the right link and the right duration for each! Now, this is on-brand for how TNN should scale.

Capital

This is a new subject area, and one I didn’t intend to be including here. But a strange thing is happening. I’ve met 4 awesome founders in the last several weeks building in 4 areas I am eager to understand better, and I asked each to put in a small “learning check” to go along for the ride. 3 have said yes so far, and the 4th is looking into it, w/ timing being the only consideration.

It is clear to me, even early on, that access will not be an issue here. As I cover more and more ground with the learning, I can be more and more helpful for the companies I work with, just by keeping an antenna up in the normal course of making TNN’s flywheel hum.

While there were several aspects I don’t like about being a professional investor, I do like being a super helpful angel that can sniff out and partner with killer founders, at the earliest stages, in markets I think will be important. Not as an occupation, but as a sidecar to the learning flywheel I am creating w/ TNN - backing the very best founders I am rubbing elbows with anyways as I get deeper and deeper into the space.

But there are a few issues. One is these learning checks are too small to be meaningful. Another is I can’t even keep writing these learning checks, let alone larger ones without a more stable w2. And a third is I won’t have a more stable w2 until TNN has a business model.

I am considering revisiting a rolling fund structure of some sort, where I can write larger checks than I could on my own (but still small relative to round size), open up that access to others who aren’t in a position to (or don’t desire to) have it on their own, and generate modest fee revenue to make the TNN journey more sustainable and make the flywheel spin faster.

If I did it, there would be no typical VC stuff. No formal reporting (beyond what AL provides). No AGMs. No memos. No exhaustive diligence. It would be in the spirit of the learning journey I am on and I would draft behind the diligence of great institutional leads who I would make sure are dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s on the stuff that someone needs to do so for.

It’s a lot to think about, and pretty different from some of the other stuff I have been ideating around (that I am also excited about!). But if I did it this way, it would be one quarter at a time and could stop whenever it made sense to do so.

It would be helpful to hear some reactions to this. I am not in a rush, and however I proceed I want to be in a thoughtful way, with intention, and internalizing what I have learned about myself from prior experiences and from 48 laps around the sun.

Asks for the week:

• Feedback on the above.

• Connections to others who have built a similar core flywheel that enables their investing without becoming professional investors.

• Intros to more founders that are 1) leveraging AI heavily internally to build their companies and 2) incorporating it heavily into their customer-facing products.

I think that’s it for now. Have a great week!