Daily Edition · Page 8

THE DAILY INDEX

Technology, AI, software, security, crypto and business

HEADLINES & TRENDS

TLDR Founders

AI WON'T REPLACE INNOVATION

History suggests that the future of AI will look less like a monopoly and more like an ecosystem. Frontier labs will build the infrastructure while thousands of companies emerge to turn that intelligence into products, workflows, and systems that solve real problems. Completely new jobs will likely be created. Founders and startups that are willing to deeply understand customers, build thoughtful systems, and focus relentlessly on specific workflows will see more opportunity than ever.

RETHINKING SAAS METRICS FOR AI

If you're still tracking ARR as your north star, it's lying to you. AI-native companies need different metrics - token consumption is the one that's hard to fake because the fastest-growing companies sit directly in the token path. Raw tokens don't tell you if you're creating value or just passing through infrastructure costs, so gross profit per million tokens is becoming the real scorecard investors are pricing companies on. DAUs stop mattering when AI agents are doing the work inside other products via MCP, and nobody trusts the LTV of any AI product right now.

HOW TO THOUGHT LEAD (2026)

Earn mindshare for your topic by regularly posting information, products, and mental models to be used by others. Thought leadership boils down to six principles, ordered explicitly in descending order of importance: have credibility; know what people aspire to; be authoritative, knowledgeable, and useful; be quoteable; be strongly opinionated; and be first, or be funny. This post looks deeper into these principles to provide a formula for thought leadership. The best thought leaders do the work first, earn credibility, and then let everything amplify a foundation that's already solid.

VENTURE CAPITAL DOESN'T EXIST

What we call 'venture capital' is a conflation of seed stage investing, traditional venture, supercharged growth investing, and previously small-cap growth tech stocks. The more the individual parts are acknowledged, the better off everyone will be. Large capital providers can still deploy capital to all four types of investing. However, founders and funders need to be aware of what game they're playing - the reality is that most genuinely don't know.

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