I'm signed up to help out at Montreal Startup Fest next week. I would love to catch up if you're there! I'll be doing the Accelerator Fest event and at the Fest both Thursday and Friday 11th-12th. https://lnkd.in/gN_Zur9E
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It's time. I've moved on from my gig as General Manager for EverCommerce to work my way back to exploring new ventures and products. I'll retain a fractional role with EC for the remainder of the year, as I build up what I'm calling a "Conversational Product Lab". What's that? It's somewhere between a place to park a couple of interesting and active new product ventures, a place to collaborate with a small cadre of my favorite industry friends, and a home to a sliver of advisory services. I'll share the details as they come to life. The time with EverCommerce was a fascinating adventure into the world of a true scaled-up PE-backed SaaS business, and into the mechanisms and frameworks of aggregating dozens of businesses together. So, I've been there, done that, learned a lot, contributed meaningfully to the growth model, and - most importantly - I recruited a group of leaders that I was delighted to bring together over the past 3-4 years. Onward! Feel free to reach out and reconnect!
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"We needed to lose three times to learn how to win." Paul Maurice, coach of the newly minted NHL Stanley Cup winners. Living through the struggles of going from a 3-0 game advantage to end up in a 3-3 tied series heading into the 7th and final game. How they won? Going back to their identity, believing deeply in their team mates, and grinding out a "full 60 minutes" effort from everyone. Start-up lessons abound here. Except maybe for the other Maurice quote "I've never hugged so many sweaty men my entire life". 😀
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Denver Network: I'm looking to set up a small office in RiNo or LoDo in August through (at least) EOY. I need a dedicated office for a 3-4 person team to meet weekly, and intermittently use 1-2 times a week. Ideal is a small meeting table and a big whiteboard - I can furnish if needed. This needs to be a dedicated space, which is why co-working spaces are not ideal. Any suggestions from my Denver network?
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The boldest move I can think of from Apple WWDC is an announcement that connects Apple's App Store with Open AI's GPT "Store". OpenAI has the early GPT momentum with developers, in part because they started with a place for devs to host their early "GPT Apps". Apple's distribution muscle would be a coveted win for OpenAI, and is would propel Apple into the middle of early product adoption, and all the juicy data and margin that goes along with it.
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A really interesting and powerful performance management practice. "Use the “30-day test” to maintain a high-performance team. Create a reminder to ask yourself this question 30 days after someone joins the team: “Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person?” If the answer is yes, tell the person you’re excited about them and give them more equity—you’ll gain a lot of loyalty. If the answer is no, you need to fire them immediately, to avoid the inevitable damage they will cause to you, your team, and themselves." from Uri Levine Founder of Waze, via Lenny's podcast. https://lnkd.in/gyS2HzZP
Uri Levine is the co-founder of 10 companies, including Waze (which he sold to Google for $1.1B) and Moovit (which he sold to Intel for $1B). He’s also been on 20 different boards, including a dozen he’s still on, and has advised over 50 startups on all things product, growth, hiring, and M&A. Most recently, he's the author of "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs" which was described by Steve Wozniak as the “Bible for entrepreneurs.” In our conversation, we cover: 🔸 Why falling in love with the problem is so important for entrepreneurs 🔸 The 3 phases of a startup, and what to focus on during each phase 🔸 Tactics for telling a compelling story when fundraising 🔸 Why firing is more important than hiring 🔸 How Waze iterated to achieve product-market fit 🔸 Much more Listen now 👇 - YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gxWJb_Rg - Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gDg4EmqF - Apple: https://lnkd.in/ge8uXpRJ Some key takeaways: 1. You need to “fall in love with the problem” that you’re solving. This is the biggest driver of startup success. It will help you deliver value to users, tell a more inspiring story about your company, and recruit a team. “Falling in love” means feeling enough passion about the problem that it can drive you to persist through hard times. 2. The ultimate measure of product-market fit is customer retention. If customers keep coming back, it indicates that your product or service is meeting their needs and providing value. Achieving product-market fit requires patience and iteration. With Waze, the team went through countless iterations, incorporating user feedback to improve the app. Uri stresses that you must “keep trying different things until you find the one thing that works.” 3. The first and last slides in a pitch deck are the most underused. They show onscreen the longest—while you get set up and while you take questions afterward—so they should contain your strongest point. Don’t waste this valuable real estate on showing your company name or “Thank you.” 4. Use the “30-day test” to maintain a high-performance team. Create a reminder to ask yourself this question 30 days after someone joins the team: “Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person?” If the answer is yes, tell the person you’re excited about them and give them more equity—you’ll gain a lot of loyalty. If the answer is no, you need to fire them immediately, to avoid the inevitable damage they will cause to you, your team, and themselves. 5. Watch users, especially those who use your product in unexpected ways. Different people use products differently, so observing a diverse range of users is key to building the right solution. Uri also advises focusing on those who didn’t convert to uncover barriers and points of friction.
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Looking back to this week's AI industry drama (yeah, it's Tuesday), I'm pleased with my personal choice to lean in - hard - on Anthropic/Claude over Open AI. Anthropic's Constitutional AI mantra really tipped the scales for me, and the fundamental Long Term Benefit Trust governance structure [LTBT] seems to deliver real teeth to mission governance alignment, not a faux "trust me" PR nod to a charismatic valley messiah. Happily, the product experience has evolved very well along the way, and I'm also delighted with Amazon's muscular commercial endorsement. Signals point to Anthropic being the best custodian of the organizing Open AI mission, while Altman exhibits the patterns of aggression and customer disrespect exhibited by Zuck as he built his personal-mission empire. Count me as an Anthropic fanboy until they prove otherwise. In full disclosure I'm a modest investor, but I also lean heavily into Gemini - because in reality behavioral change is evolutionary and very rarely revolutionary - their pole position can't be ignored. Posts like this one below get deep respect from the smartest balanced minds in the business; meanwhile Altman jockeys for his Entertainment Tonight fandom; indeed, we've already proven that Silicon Valley stardom is never enough.
🚨🚨🚨 Interpretability and Explainability for LLMs just landed!!!! Why using Anthropic Claude Family LLMs instead of OpenAI GPT? Choosing one or the other depends on various factors such as coding capabilities, reasoning, and overall knowledge proficiency. However, amidst these considerations, safety emerges as paramount. Claude models adhere to the principle of Constitutional AI, which prioritizes safety through several key facets: 🤖 Codification of principles to mitigate harmful behavior 🧮 Utilization of efficient AI-generated datasets, reducing dependence on time-consuming human feedback 🤗 Production of outputs characterized by honesty, helpfulness, and harmlessness Today, Anthropic unveils a groundbreaking advance in AI model interpretability. They've delved dive into Claude Sonnet's inner workings, uncovering millions of understood concepts. This newfound transparency is pivotal for ensuring AI models are not only powerful but also trustworthy and safe. By comprehending how Claude represents concepts, Anthropic can monitor and guide its behavior, thereby enhancing safety measures. This is a completely game changer in terms of AI Safety and Explainability and something most of the customers are demanding. 📚 More details on Anthropic announcement: https://lnkd.in/dhTiyVZs 📜 Go to the paper: https://lnkd.in/dSUsGFcK #ai #genai
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This week, the "sherlocking" of AI startups appeared in full force. I was reminded of the term at yesterday's Boulder Startup Week mentor mingling event. For those unfamiliar, it's a term applied to Apple's long-standing behavior of using the intelligence of its Appstore position to evaluate which popular apps to convert into free features of its own products. With the aggressive progress of core AI platforms in the news this week, I'd bet hundreds (but probably thousands) of start-ups working on their "AI startups" winced as they saw their ideas disappear into a presentation bullet as AI platforms embrace obvious expansions that [1] make users engage more deeply/frequently, and [2] convince developers to embrace each platform. It was interesting to hear OpenAI this week refer to their efforts to host GPTs from enthusiastic small startups as their "Store". Assume that your coveted "Top Picks" in this market-making feature probably means you've become a key feature upgrade business case in the product planning team of OpenAI [and their ilk]. https://lnkd.in/eyrhBxs9
What Does It Mean When an App Gets “Sherlocked” by Apple?
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