fun metric:
% of what you type that goes to AI versus to humans
a few years ago it was 0/100 - dominated by email/texts
then it was 10/90 - initially stealing all my Google searches
today I feel like it’s 25/75? Maybe more?
When does it cross >50%?
New essay:
NEW FOUNDER ARCHETYPES IN THE AI AGE
Solo founders
- Why: Solo founders can do 100x with AI, so they can ship a v1 when previously they couldn’t have before
- Why not: Maybe a team of cofounders still makes more progress. Maybe you can agentically code but someone still needs to do a million meetings with customers. Maybe coding was never the main bottleneck for startups in the first place?
Non-technical founders
- Why: There’s elite talent that comes from areas like finance, consulting, who can’t code but are passionate about business. There’s also folks in creative industries who create all day but just not in code. Now they can build
- Why not: Why not: Maybe AI makes it easier to build a prototype, but there’s still a big gap between a demo and a reliable product that can scale. If everyone can build the first version, maybe technical judgment becomes more important in deciding what to build, what’s actually possible, and how to stay ahead as the product gets more complex. (especially true for product categories like dev tools/etc)
Domain experts
- Why: A doctor who works at a hospital understands all the problems they face each day. A real estate broker really gets the subtleties of their markets, their clients. Same with a soldier, teacher, etc. What if they could use software to solve their own problems and build business along the way?
- Why not: Hoteliers didn’t create Airbnb and the finance industry didn’t create Kalshi. Sometimes you just need an outsider’s view in order to reinvent an industry, versus building incremental improvements
Kids, high schoolers, college students
- Why: Young people have already been building products early on. Start with a Minecraft mod, a Roblox game, a Discord bot, and suddenly you’ve learned how to make something that thousands of other people use. Now add AI, and a kid with an idea can build way more, way earlier
- Why not: Building something your friends love is very different from building a company. You still have to hire, raise money, manage people, and figure out how to make money. And maybe young founders have an advantage in consumer products because they understand their peers, but much less of one when it comes to enterprise software, healthcare, or other industries where experience and relationships really matter. Sometimes you just need domain expertise
Content creators
- Why: They’re already creating. So instead of creating videos, maybe the same skills can go into creating software. Plus, they have distribution. They know what their followers care about, how to get their attention, and how to reach them without paying for ads. In the past, turning that audience into a software product meant finding a technical cofounder or hiring a team. Now a creator could build and launch something themselves, and immediately put it in front of millions of potential users.
- Why not: Having followers helps with a spike of distribution, but building a sustainable growth engine is something else. The most valuable products aren’t memes - they are long-running, long-growing products that need to be endlessly tweaked and iterated on. Does the DNA work?
what are the new types of founders that might get unlocked in the post-AI era?
- solo founders
- non-technical founders
- domain expert with no tech experience (ex: a dentist builds dental SaaS empire)
- content creator whose new content is "apps"
... who else is on this list?
New essay:
NEW FOUNDER ARCHETYPES IN THE AI AGE
Solo founders
- Why: Solo founders can do 100x with AI, so they can ship a v1 when previously they couldn’t have before
- Why not: Maybe a team of cofounders still makes more progress. Maybe you can agentically code but someone still needs to do a million meetings with customers. Maybe coding was never the main bottleneck for startups in the first place?
Non-technical founders
- Why: There’s elite talent that comes from areas like finance, consulting, who can’t code but are passionate about business. There’s also folks in creative industries who create all day but just not in code. Now they can build
- Why not: Why not: Maybe AI makes it easier to build a prototype, but there’s still a big gap between a demo and a reliable product that can scale. If everyone can build the first version, maybe technical judgment becomes more important in deciding what to build, what’s actually possible, and how to stay ahead as the product gets more complex. (especially true for product categories like dev tools/etc)
Domain experts
- Why: A doctor who works at a hospital understands all the problems they face each day. A real estate broker really gets the subtleties of their markets, their clients. Same with a soldier, teacher, etc. What if they could use software to solve their own problems and build business along the way?
- Why not: Hoteliers didn’t create Airbnb and the finance industry didn’t create Kalshi. Sometimes you just need an outsider’s view in order to reinvent an industry, versus building incremental improvements
Kids, high schoolers, college students
- Why: Young people have already been building products early on. Start with a Minecraft mod, a Roblox game, a Discord bot, and suddenly you’ve learned how to make something that thousands of other people use. Now add AI, and a kid with an idea can build way more, way earlier
- Why not: Building something your friends love is very different from building a company. You still have to hire, raise money, manage people, and figure out how to make money. And maybe young founders have an advantage in consumer products because they understand their peers, but much less of one when it comes to enterprise software, healthcare, or other industries where experience and relationships really matter. Sometimes you just need domain expertise
Content creators
- Why: They’re already creating. So instead of creating videos, maybe the same skills can go into creating software. Plus, they have distribution. They know what their followers care about, how to get their attention, and how to reach them without paying for ads. In the past, turning that audience into a software product meant finding a technical cofounder or hiring a team. Now a creator could build and launch something themselves, and immediately put it in front of millions of potential users.
- Why not: Having followers helps with a spike of distribution, but building a sustainable growth engine is something else. The most valuable products aren’t memes - they are long-running, long-growing products that need to be endlessly tweaked and iterated on. Does the DNA work?
RT @jyoung008: Every company needs capital to scale and grow. To-date, @speedrun companies have raised nearly $1B.
If you want a deeply experienced team in your corner every single step of the way as you navigate early-stage venture, fundraising, and financing, drop an application!
Can't wait to work together 🚀
RT @speedrun: ONE WEEK LEFT
The final day to apply for our next residency is Sunday, Nov 1st. If you have the makings of a generational founder, don't hesitate.
It's time to build.
RT @a16z: Tony Xu of @DoorDash on getting rejected by investors, competing against rivals with thousands of times more capital, and how founders can tell conviction from delusion:
"I had over 100 rejections in a span of over 1,000 days where the company almost constantly ran out of money... I couldn't raise a dime, and we were running out of capital."
"Companies like Amazon or Uber were in the space who had way more capital than we had. Hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times of capital deployed versus the amount that we raised. So then the question becomes, well, how are you gonna win this cash-burning machine?"
"This is where you as the founder have to finely tune that line between delusion and knowing that you have something that others don't understand. What are the customers telling you?"
"We the founders did deliveries for almost virtually every day the first three years of the company's life... And so we had strong points of view on each side of our marketplace that could explain what was happening in the numbers."
"When you have one set of facts, which is your customers, you have another set of facts, what are called opinions and perceptions, you gotta trust the facts. That's ultimately what kept us going."
@t_xu w/ @speedrun GP @andrewchen
Ben Horowitz's message to early-stage founders on betting on yourself, the doubts that do the most damage, and why fear means you're doing it right:
"Your job is to make your bet pay off. You believed in yourself enough to do it. There are gonna be many times when you question that bet and you question that belief, but that gets you nothing."
"The doubts are gonna be there. Ignore the doubts. The worst doubts aren't the ones people put on you. It's the ones that you put on yourself. Every entrepreneur has them."
"I spent a lot of time with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 22 years old and he had a tremendous doubt about whether he was gonna make it."
"It's not what you feel. It's what you do. You're gonna feel scared. If your guts aren't boiling, you're not even trying at this thing."
@bhorowitz w/ @speedrun GP @andrewchen
Ben Horowitz's message to early-stage founders on betting on yourself, the doubts that do the most damage, and why fear means you're doing it right:
"Your job is to make your bet pay off. You believed in yourself enough to do it. There are gonna be many times when you question that bet and you question that belief, but that gets you nothing."
"The doubts are gonna be there. Ignore the doubts. The worst doubts aren't the ones people put on you. It's the ones that you put on yourself. Every entrepreneur has them."
"I spent a lot of time with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 22 years old and he had a tremendous doubt about whether he was gonna make it."
"It's not what you feel. It's what you do. You're gonna feel scared. If your guts aren't boiling, you're not even trying at this thing."
@bhorowitz w/ @speedrun GP @andrewchen
RT @noor_siddiqui_: I went to TED to talk about the biggest injustice in the world nobody takes seriously.
The genetic lottery is wildly unfair. Why should a dice roll decide your life?
It robs babies of the ability to walk. To talk. To make it to her first birthday. One wrong letter out of 3 billion. And we shrug and call it bad luck.
It blinded my mother. After years of testing, the answer was: there’s nothing we can do.
She’s not alone. 400 million people live with a rare genetic disease. Half are children. 95% have no approved treatment.
I’m done pretending it’s fate. It’s a typo. And for the first time in history, we can read all 3 billion bases before a pregnancy begins.
RT @GEVS94: Self Improving Companies
A customer buying a car doesn’t care which team handles sales, financing or support. They want a great experience with someone who knows them personally and has the full picture.
I’ve seen customer lifetime value increase when one agent owns that relationship. Let agents learn from the work, test improvements and share what works, and the company gets better as it operates.
Selling this to an incumbent means asking people to change their systems and often their own jobs.
A founder starting today can build around the customer from day one. At the speed AI is moving, it may be better to build the AI native bank, insurer or marketplace yourself.
If you’re building this, let’s talk.
cc @a16z@speedrun
RT @_CallMeMacy: speedrun founders land Customers most startups wait years for. Here’s how our GTM team gives you that unfair market advantage.
Trust me, watching this 3 min video can get you over $10M+ in credits, but you gotta apply to @speedrun too:
RT @speedrun: NEW: INVESTOR ADVICE FOR APPLYING TO SPEEDRUN (SR008 EDITION)
Every cohort we sit down with our investors to hear what’s top of mind. This time @ndrewlee got in the booth with @kenanhsaleh, @emilybenn12, @seeamshahidnoor, and @tkexpress11 to talk about:
00:00 - what’s changed in apps this cycle
04:15 - team vs. market vs. traction: how we weigh them
08:14 - hot markets vs. ones that feel inevitable
10:36 - spotting the gaps the frontier models leave
13:35 - where speedrun fits in your founder journey
22:26 - how to make your application stand out
30:05 - common mistakes (AI is not your “why now”)
38:46 - the 10-min interview + co-founder dynamics
45:41 - what you get working with speedrun
SR008 apps close Nov 1. Watch the full roundtable here 👇
p(China) is what we should be talking about, not p(doom)
What is the probability that China - with its lead in robotics, manufacturing, construction capability, and second place on AI, GPUs, innovation - will become the primary beneficiary of the technological revolution the world is experiencing, over the next decades?
If your p(China) is high, what are you doing - and what should we be doing - to advance US capabilities in the coming decades so that we can lead, not follow?
IMHO p(doom) is the sideshow
RT @justmazer: founders: getting up to $1M in funding via @speedrun is actually the easiest part of the journey - as you start to build your product, you'll need to build your team... and I have some bad news: recruiting sucks.
Most experienced founders will tell you that they spent at least half their time in the early days trying to woo early missionaries to join their cause.
Your options at the earliest stages aren't great:
• Agencies are expensive + generally have perverse incentives
• You could do all the recruiting... but it's often too time-intensive to do effectively
• Hiring an internal recruiter doesn't make sense yet...
• Job postings... welcome to the nightmare of AI-generated apps!
I want to give you a better option. Our goal as the Speedrunun talent team: lend you our brand and hiring prowess. Not just hollow words and advice... because advice is cheap. Sourced candidates are not.
Our team of internal recruiters spends every single day cultivating relationships with world-class talent from the most heavily in-demand functional backgrounds (AI, ML, Full Stack Eng, Design Eng, Designers, etc), and then we curate and share that talent with founders across the portfolio.
We're on track this year to directly place ~150 hires into speedrun portfolio companies.
No fee.
No perverse incentives.
Just a purely aligned desire with the founders to get them exactly what they are searching for.
One day there will be a solo-founder unicorn, and all this hiring drudgery might go away. Until then, you're going to have to build your team - so let our team (@nazzari, @thetalentcarver, @joegarciaisme ) help you build yours.
APPLY TO SPEEDRUN >>>
