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PROTAIGÉ

Protaigé is an AI platform that creates complete, on-brand marketing campaigns using coordinated agent workflows.

CONVO

Convo is a drop-in SDK for logging, debugging, and personalizing LLM apps with memory and observability built in.

TRICKLE

Trickle is an all-in-one AI app builder for creating agents, websites, and forms with built-in models, database, and analytics.

THEY HAVE TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT US WITHOUT US

You have to tell a story so clear, so concise, and memorable, and so evocative, that people repeat it for you even after you've left the room. This means that the people who hear it need to be able to do this the first time they hear the story. You have to explain your idea and make your case while teaching the listener how to do the same thing themselves. Delivering this kind of story requires actual substance - fakery is immediately obvious.

USING LLMS AT OXIDE

LLM use is encouraged at Oxide, but its use must be responsible to the product and to its customers. This article discusses Oxide's approach to using LLMs. It covers the company's values in LLM usage, the different use cases for LLMs, and more. A document that details specific tips is linked in the article.

YOU CAN HIDE FROM A LOT OF THINGS AS A FOUNDER. CASH BURN ISN'T ONE OF THEM

Founders can't ignore cash burn - it's a relentless reality that dictates survival.

THE 10 PRINCIPLES OF SLACK MAXIMALISM

Consider moving everything to Slack if you are doing high-intensity operations.

A SF VC IN NYC

A San Francisco-based VC reflects on NYC's influence over the past 15 years, highlighting key investments like Artsy, Hinge, and Brigit, which collectively represent over $2.5B in annual revenue

THINK FIRST, AI SECOND

Learn how to think with AI rather than letting it think for you.

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THE STATE OF AI

The past year in AI has seen rapid shifts in capability, adoption, and developer behavior. These changes have reshaped how we build and interact with intelligent systems. This post looks at a new study that examines these changes through more than 100 trillion tokens of real-world model usage from OpenRouter. The goal of the study was to provide a large-scale empirical picture of what people do with AI today and what that tells us about the future of the industry.

A COMMENTARY ON THE GENERAL PHENOMENON OF BEST-IN-CLASS GROWTH COMPANIES RAISING SUCCESSIVE ROUNDS AT HIGHER AND HIGHER VALUATIONS

Most of the financing for best-in-class growth companies raising successive rounds at higher and higher valuations makes no sense. Growth equity capital is very expensive. Companies at this scale typically deploy a substantial majority of their expensive equity dollars into highly predictable, relatively low-risk GTM initiatives. The capital is being used inappropriately, and these companies should finance their GTM investments differently.

VERCEL'S AI SALES AGENT: 10 SDRS DOWN TO 1 IN SIX WEEKS

Vercel enabled its salespeople to spend most of their time with customers by transforming its inbound sales team. It used an AI sales representative to respond and analyze leads, which condensed the number of touches it took to convert. AI enabled quicker responses, creating an unexpected advantage. Increasing human contact means salespeople can develop deeper relationships and drive more success for customers.

TRANSPARENT LEADERSHIP BEATS SERVANT LEADERSHIP

A servant leader quickly becomes an overworked single point of failure. Once they leave, there is nobody else who knows how to handle the obstacles the leader moved out of the way for everyone. A good leader coaches people, connects people, teaches methodical problem solving, and explains values and principles embraced by the organization. They create direct links between supply and demand and allow their direct reports to grow their careers. Good leaders are continuously training their replacements and generally make themselves redundant.

FIZZY

A refreshing take on cards, columns, and kanban.

HONEYJAR

AI co-pilot for communications and PR.

PYLAR

Pylar is a platform that securely connects AI agents to data sources with granular access controls and observability.

BECOMING GREAT AT LISTENING

Your job as a listener is to consume decades of someone else's experience in minutes. This is impossible if you are busy mentally scripting your reply. The secret to world-class communication is to treat listening and thinking as mutually exclusive states. Turn off your analysis engine completely while they speak. When they finish, ask for a "thinking pause." That awkward silence is the only way to truly synthesize reality before you act on it.

THINK FIRST, AI SECOND

We are starting to see the long-term cognitive cost of "AI First" workflows: our brains are literally disengaging. An MIT study found that students who used AI at the start of a task showed lower neural activity and memory retention than those who did the work themselves. The fix is not to ban AI, but to change the sequence. Always force yourself to draft the structure or outline before you open the prompt window. By treating AI as a "Devil's Advocate" that critiques your existing thoughts rather than a generator to create them, you keep your cognitive edge while still leveraging the speed of the model.

API-BENCH V2

A new study revealed that general LLMs fail nearly 40% of the time when building real-world API integrations, proving that specialized infrastructure is still required to handle outdated documentation and debugging.

WHY SELL LIFETIME PLANS, IN A DEFAULT SUBSCRIPTION WORLD?

Evangelism is worth more than money, especially early on.

LOUD ISN'T ENOUGH

You cannot displace a giant with a spreadsheet, you have to turn their entire existence into a moral problem.

SAVE YOUR SEAT

BET THE FARM

Many companies are bragging about wide-scale AI adoption, but their hallway conversations tell a different story: many employees haven't opened AI tools in weeks. Dashboards are showing logins, not usage. This is transformation theater. Companies that go all in on AI by making it mandatory tell a different story: increased revenue and lower headcount. The best people see the theater and leave for places where transformation is real.

THE AGE OF SCALING IS OVER!

AI labs have spent five years betting that more data and more GPUs would solve everything. That bet is no longer paying off. As scaling laws flatten, the industry is shifting focus to "test-time compute", forcing models to spend more resources reasoning during a task rather than just training bigger brains.

9 REASONS ICPS DON'T BOOK A DEMO

Most companies run ads before they actually know who they're selling to. The "GTM Delta" framework forces you to fix your foundation, “Market and Message,” before spending a dime on sales plays. If you don't know exactly who your buyer is, automation just scales your failure. Stop dumping "content libraries" on prospects. Your job isn't to be a library - it's to be a guide.

THE INVESTOR CALL FRAMEWORK

The moment you lose control of the meeting structure is the moment you lose the investment. Investors judge your leadership potential based on your ability to drive a conversation, not just your slide deck. A winning 30-minute call requires a strict psychological sequence: Intro, Context, Proof, Ask, and Next Steps. Do not wait for the VC to lead the discussion. You set the agenda, you frame the problem, and you define exactly what happens after the call ends.

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TRUE3D BANNERS

Turn your existing image or video creative into an interactive ad that reduces CPC by 30%.

CLOVER SECURITY

Design-led product security with AI agents that act like experienced security architects and extend the team's reach.

RUNLLM

RunLLM is an AI agent that resolves technical issues by reading logs and code.

THE AWKWARD EXIT: $150M TO $300M ACQUISITIONS

A $200M exit is often life-changing for a founder but a failure for a Series C investor. This "Grey Zone" creates boardroom deadlock. Early investors (Seed/Series A) are happy with a 5x return, while late-stage funds that underwrote a $1B outcome may block the sale to avoid a write-down. The solution: negotiate secondary sales during your growth rounds.

SILICON VALLEY BUILDS AMAZON AND GMAIL COPYCATS TO TRAIN AI AGENTS

Several Silicon Valley startups have spent the past several months recreating popular websites so AI systems can learn to navigate the internet and complete specific tasks on their own. If an AI system learns to use a replica of the site, it can use the real site, too. The shadow sites are a significant part of the tech industry's efforts to transform chatbots into AI agents. Many companies believe that AI agents will be able to replace some white-collar workers in the coming years.

A BETA IS LIKE INVITING GUESTS OVER

The main advantage of a beta is not research - it is basic hygiene.

VANITY ACTIVITIES

Optimization often masks itself as productivity.

JEFF BEZOS ON THE 4 PRINCIPLES THAT DIFFERENTIATED AMAZON

Amazon's edge comes from four simple habits: obsessing over customers, inventing instead of copying, thinking in 5–7 year horizons, and taking operations seriously.

Read the full findings and analysis

SUPABASE CEO ON THE "PAINFUL" DECISIONS THAT BUILT A $5B COMPANY

Supabase, valued at $5 billion, raised $100 million after previously raising $200 million at a $2 billion valuation. Its CEO, Paul Copplestone, prioritizes sticking to a product vision over accepting demanding enterprise contracts.

WHAT DOES A "HEALTHY" VENTURE MARKET ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

Boutique Seed funds continue to lead the majority of sub-$10M rounds, despite mega-funds increasingly entering earlier-stage investments. Series A activity clusters around $20M, but competition intensifies above that level, with mega-funds taking a dominant role in rounds above $50M. This shift in dynamics compels investors to differentiate by emphasizing talent and innovation, as traditional stage boundaries blur and AI drives significant opportunity for reinvention.

HOW TO SELL TO ENGINEERS

Engineers assume all salespeople are incompetent. They think about scalability, speed, and reliability, but not money so much. Focus on how your product will save time and reduce effort. Don't be too loud, don't agitate them, and let them come to you.

MOST COMMON ACCOUNTING MISTAKES

There are a lot of accounting mistakes that can make benchmarking an apples-to-oranges comparison. Your accounting needs to be clean, or your leaders and board won't trust you. This post discusses the most common accounting mistakes. Don't wait until you are deep in M&A diligence or prepping for an IPO before correcting these mistakes, or it may materially impact metrics.

PETER THIEL ON HOW TO IDENTIFY GREAT TALENT

Peter Thiel recruited the founders of YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Affirm before any of them started those companies. When asked what he looks for in undiscovered talent, he said he wants people who are both stubborn and open-minded.