Wow mindblown by @Apple. my AirPods just survived a full 2hr hot heavy duty extra rinse wash cycle in the washing machine, still works perfectly fine 🤯
15.09.2025 17:08
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Wow mindblown by @Apple. my AirPods just survived a full 2hr hot heavy duty extra rinse wash cycle in the washing machine, still works perfectly fine 🤯
In the AI era, software development is no longer about writing code, it’s orchestrating AI-powered workflows and staying fluent in a fast-evolving tool chain.
Really exciting to see Stanford University and Mihail Eric offer such a timely course “The Modern Software Developer”
- Growth trajectory can beat market size.
Airbnb had just 47k homestay guests in 2010 but dominated a rapidly expanding category
- Minimize “time to magic.”
Study how quickly target users reach their “wow” moment and whether it fundamentally transforms an existing experience or behavior pattern. The most successful consumer companies (Uber, Tinder, Instacart, etc) delivered this magic through dramatic friction reduction
- Identify intense user love early.
Genuine passion among even a small user base signals future scale. “You can grow the love, but you can’t fake the love.”
I recently co-hosted a dinner gathering the most thoughtful consumer investors and founders to unpack what it takes to build enduring consumer businesses in the AI era.
Lessons from the past:
Consumer investors are a dying breed.
VC funding in consumer companies plunged from ~30% of global venture dollars in 2014 to just ~6% in 2024.
Yet fundamental human needs haven’t changed.
Massive opportunities exist, and AI has reignited excitement to build hyper-personalized experiences.
Scandinavian founders have created some of the world's most defining companies (Linux, Databricks, Spotify, Minecraft, Oura, Cursor, list goes on) thanks to hotbeds of talent at universities like Aalto University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Fun to host this group at Menlo Ventures!
People think @alexhonnold.bsky.social has a broken fear response to achieve the impossible, but it’s thousands of hours of prep.
The only way to tell the difference between well-founded fear and irrational nervousness is experience and exposure
@amytongwu.bsky.social at @MenloVentures CEO summit
I got engaged and the @rhobusiness team same day sent flowers. That level of care is how they put themselves on the map so quickly as an up-and-coming startup banking platform
@TarlonKhoubyari @JasonGrohowski @justinwolz @PartenDrewL
Gender norms aside, having a truly supportive partner is a game changer and should always be celebrated.
Oh and he does my laundry.
He sends me a pep talk on his walk to work every day, sources deals and tests out products for me, role plays difficult conversations with me. He is always on the look-out for opportunities I can benefit from to make sure I have everything I need to succeed, and more.
Every month we go over our long-term and short-term goals and how we can support each other in our progress. He is the clearest thinker I know and edits my posts.
I posted the tweet in jest, but it sparked a "global gender debate" about women being "invisible emotional labor sidekicks to men's visible professional successes."
In actuality my fiancée(!) is my secret weapon.
Life update 🚨
8 months after I went viral for supporting my YC boyfriend, he proposed this past weekend by bringing together a hundred of our friends and family to surprise me with a standup comedy show (that I had to perform in).
4. Founders are the first growth channel.
From TikToks to public Discords, it’s clear: people follow people. Your early GTM might be scrappier than you think.
3. Design retention before acquisition.
Midjourney optimized the model, not the website, for stickiness—building image personalization into the core experience to keep users coming back.
2. Start community before you start paid.
Each company waited to turn on paid ads until organic traction was proven. The order matters: authenticity first, acceleration second.
1. Product is your best distribution channel.
If people don’t love it, nothing else matters. Status grew via referral codes embedded in the core loop.
The new consumer go-to-market playbook is being written in real time. At our GTM panel, leaders from Midjourney, Bumble Inc., and Status broke down what’s actually working to build, grow, and retain millions of users.
The IRS expects over $500B in missing funds - more than 10% of tax receipts - as ppl skip filing after IRS began layoffs cutting 20k staffers, 25% of the total workforce.
🎟️ And IRL is back: some enterprise CMOs are allocating 50%+ of budget to events because they have the highest conversion.
⚠️ DTC warning: many consumer startups are hitting the “CAC Valley of Death”—where paid channels no longer scale profitably post-PMF.
💬 AI tools like Decagon are taking over customer support—with CSAT scores exceeding top reps.
🤖 Tools like Clay are automating outbound, replacing manual enrichment and entire sales teams.
👥 Some B2B brands are even creating influencers— for example by backing rising CFO voices on LinkedIn
📦 Google’s shift to product carousels (not blue links) is forcing brands to re-index entire catalogs. Query lengths are up 50%.
🔍 LLM-optimized SEO is the next wave. Inbound leads from ChatGPT & Perplexity are doubling month over month.
🎙️ Podcast spend is surging and starting to take up significant portions of budget. More companies are starting their own podcasts like Shopify to have owned media.
🧠 SEO agencies have mostly been scams - beware. AI is replacing SEO teams with custom GPTs trained on top-performing content.
CMOs are re-writing the growth playbook. I recently attended a CMO dinner hosted by Nasdaq and it was fascinating to learn:
📈 Retail media is exploding: CMOs are fleeing Meta/Google and reallocating up to 60% of spend to alternative channels. Instacart, DoorDash, Uber, Walmart, Amazon, etc.
I sprinted so hard for the @caltrain.com this morning the conductors came over concerned I was having a heart attack 😅 gave me a bottle of water / congratulated me over the intercom. Heroes! 🙏 Cody & Ray thank you for your service. Not pictured: me drenched in sweat
I'm hosting a breakfast for top builders & operators in NYC Thurs 4/17 to celebrate Founders You Should Know coming to New York! lu.ma/zent5xev
I always recommend FYSK to any startup hiring or anyone even thinking about their next move - their acceptance rate is <2%!
Some ways I've seen founders change their ranking:
- chatGPT currently ranks heavily on Bing and Reddit, get a lot of Reddit posts
- manual re-prompting
Tools helping brands understand their AI visiblity: @tryprofound, Evertune, Bluefish, Scrunch, etc. Gumshoe offers a free report!
Up to 30% of company inbound leads are coming from LLMs🚨
Differences betw LLM & traditional SEO:
- Search engines care about popularity, LLMs care ab credibility. So think # of clicks vs. the content/source itself
- SEO prefers aged content w/ accumulated backlinks,LLMs prioritize recent content.