Napkin Sketches Now Become AI Products—No Pre‑product Excuse
"we pitched investors when it was just a drawing on a napkin" Think we'll be hearing this a lot less if you can draw it on a napkin, you can prompt it into existence. No excuse to be pre-product unless you're building a robotics startup or something?
SF's NIMBYism Fuels Housing Crisis, Stifles Startups
at what point does SF's NIMBYism make it a hostile and too expensive place for new startups? Certainly makes it hard for the unfunded eventually the California undersupply of housing becomes the primary obstacle to tech and innovation (and thus the...
AI-Powered Demos Attract Cofounders, Customers, Investors Instantly
Before: move to SF. have an idea. look for a tech cofounder. build a deck in the meantime. Months pass... After: codex/claude in one window, X in the other. Build demo. Make a video of the demo. Announce it online, make it go...
AI‑trained Founders Boost Startup Speed, Reshape Venture Landscape
first wave of non-technical founders who learned to code from AI are now starting companies. their technical ceiling is much lower but their iteration speed is 10x. (or infinity if you consider they couldn't build software before). that trade-off changes...
Local AI Hits S‑Curve: Quality Near SOTA, Portable
set up a mini rack for a home lab setup (will share a pic soon) w my Mac mini and DGX spark with more coming. had a few thoughts as I play w qwen3.5, gemma4, and other models: - there’s an...
Big Media Deals Reveal Hidden Undervalued Gems
the 9-figure acquisitions of The Free Press and TBPN tell you that: - yes, most media properties are overvalued and sinking - but also, some are way way undervalued bullish on the next gen
Tiny Teams Disrupt Industries, AI Fuels Next Wave
reminder it only took 50 people at Craigslist to disrupt an entire industry’s economics But also it takes less than that to build platforms like uber, eBay, doordash, etc that can provide new income to millions More of both will come as...
AI Should Automate Emails, Meetings, and Hiring
everyone's talking about AI replacing middle managers but the real unlock for me would be for AI to: - do my email - replace the need for all my weekly meetings and 1:1s - make hiring loops more efficient 😂
Globalization 2026: Regional Strengths Converge, Heading to Orbit
globalization in 2026: American models, Korean memory, Taiwanese silicon, Chinese competition, Middle Eastern capital, European regulation 😂 and soon- orbital compute
Voice‑Driven Coding Will Dominate Agentic Development
learning from openclaw: 95%+ of agentic coding will be done via voice, from our phones in the future 😂
Apple’s AI Hype Can’t Excuse iPhone Dictation’s Flaws
v excited about all of apple’s cool AI projects etc etc but can we just make the dictation on the iphone not suck (Yes I’m grouchy about siri, voice dictation, search, etc etc- it should just be so much better)
Growth Teams Evolve: From Funnels to Loops to Agents
2005: growth teams optimized funnels 2015: growth teams optimized loops 2026: growth teams optimize agents
Spotting True AI‑Native Products vs Gimmick Add‑Ons
how to tell the difference between AI-native products versus when AI is bolted on after the fact... fake AI products: - main AI feature is an AI button with sparkle icons - chat pane where you can ask LLM questions - no memory/personalization beyond...
AI “Slop” Is Simply Early‑stage Generated Content
what people call "ai slop" is just AI generated content that's not good enough yet
AI Text and Images Reach Human‑Like Realism
the uncanny valley is over for text and photos. I can't tell the difference. Video next. What happens after that?
Revenue‑Sustaining Startups Risk AI Pivot Missteps
lots of non-AI native startups funded in the 2020-2025 timeframe trying to figure out: - can you reinvent the product to be AI-native? - do you pivot towards AI? - or just use AI in the backoffice, and ride it out? opportunity cost is...
Founders Should Code Their MVP First, Even Roughly
Founder-Led Coding: Something that I think we’re about to see pretty often with the massive increase of entrepreneurial but non-technical founders who can use AI code gen to build their v1 products we’re about to see founder led coding. Founder led sales:...
Organic Growth Beats Paid Ads for Sustainable Startup Success
There's a vast marketing industrial complex of agencies/consultants/advisors/whatever that promotes tech startups spending billions of dollars of unaccountable marketing budget. They're triggered by my anti-paid stance but here's the reality: - paid marketing is much, much worse than organic on every metric...
AI's Next Wave: Agent‑first APIs, Not Chat Panels
Web 1.0 came with new channels: - email, search, link sharing, etc Web 2.0 too: - feeds, creators, viral invites, etc Mobile: - app stores, SMS invites, vertical vid, mobile ads What about AI? I’ve been complaining that AI hasn’t come with much. But we’re...
Paid Ads Tax Defensibility; Build Cheaper Scalable Growth Channels
lots of AI cos starting to experiment with paid marketing so here’s my take: Paid acquisition is a tax on your product's defensibility. the moment you can't out-spend the incumbents and competitors, you die. build channels that get cheaper as you...
AI Frees Us by Automating Replaceable Tasks
AI isn’t about replacing people. It’s about replacing the parts of people that can be replaced, so that we can focus all our time on doing new stuff
AI Will Turn Marketplace Supply Into Autonomous Agents
marketplace startups are destined to be massively reinvented by AI. The weak form is already happening, where we use LLMs for customer support, supply/demand matching, etc. That’s easy The strong form is to figure out how much of the supply side...
Investors Seek Insightful, Market‑Aligned Contrarians, Not Mere Rebels
everyone claims they want "contrarian" founders but what they actually want - founders with a non-obvious insight that happens to align with an explosive market This is bc contrarian + right = visionary. contrarian + wrong = unemployed
AGI Future: Endless Creation, Not Endless Leisure
Thus, the post AGI world won’t be a life of leisure where we frolic in nature 24x7 and stop working Because the most fun thing to do will be to build cool new stuff using AGI 24x7. We’ll be glued to...
Recorded Presentations Curb AI‑filled Interview Homework
In recent years interviews for execs, product managers, marketers, etc have started to add a homework step so that people can show work output. It can be super helpful signal In recent weeks these homework replies have become overwhelmed with AI...
Get $5K Grants for NYC/BOS AI Event Hackathons
giving $5k grants for NYC/BOS folks hosting events on AI agents / hackathons / etc for Tech Week in May/June:
Fast‑talking Humans Seem Smarter; Slow LLMs Frustrate
People that talk at 10 tokens/s = very smart LLMs that output at 50 tokens/s = annoying and slow 🤷♂️
AI Evolves From Chat Prompts to Proactive Coworker
ai is shifting from “chatbot UX” to “coworker UX.” it’s not just about having smartest model, they’ll have the best handoff between human judgment and autonomous execution I think this is what we see in explosive hype around openclaw. What's magical...
AI Code Generation Will Render Spreadsheets Obsolete
prediction re the end of spreadsheets AI code gen means that anything that is currently modeled as a spreadsheet is better modeled in code. You get all the advantages of software - libraries, open source, AI, all the complexity and expressiveness. think...
AI Cuts Development Costs, Distribution Remains Challenging
AI is makes software cheaper to build, but not easier to distribute This is the core conflict for years to come
AI Forces Preseed Focus on Demos, Not Ideas
AI moves the goalposts for raising preseed capital: less “tell me your product idea” more “show me what you built and how customers react” In the 1990s people raised $5m+ just to build the v1 of their website. In 2000s that...
Product Improves, CAC Rises: AI Amplifies Growth Dilemma
your product gets better every week, but your CAC gets worse every month Can your product get good enough to generate organic growth before your marketing channels saturate with scale? AI is going to supercharge this conflict. We’ll write even more and...
A16z Speedrun Seeks Events & Community Marketing Lead
new role opening up on the a16z speedrun team: come work with me and @SamiraBehrouzan - this is directly on the our speedrun team where we work with hundreds of founders. Dream job for the right person 😎 — Some notes from Samira...
Founders Mistake Product Flaws for Growth Issues
lesson from 20+ years working in startups: most founders don’t have a growth problem. they have a product problem disguised as a growth problem
Growth Hack 2026: Let AI Agents Recommend You
the best growth hack in 2026 will be to build something so good that AI agents recommend it to users Not word of mouth… word of agent
Future Teams: PMs Code, Architect Manages Infrastructure
anyone with theories on how software teams will evolve? today: 1 eng, 1 PM, 1 designer (EPD) tomorrow: 10 PMs who vibe code all day + 1 eng architect (the architect creates the scaffolding and writes adversarial agents to manage tech debt, security, scalability issues) Thoughts?
Every App Becomes a Self‑Coding, Shareable Platform
prior gen software products often added scripting languages/macros so that people can extend functionality (Excel being the most famous, but also modding in games, etc) what if every app becomes a vibe coding app? That is, in any app that you use...
Hidden Startup Jobs via A16z Speedrun Referrals
for folks thinking about a new thing in 2026: we want to find you a job at a startup -- we’ve invested in >250 companies so far via a16z speedrun. I’ve spent time with all of the founders: I’m betting (literally)...
Seed Funding Dominates San Francisco, Outpacing All Regions
check out this chart -- the majority of seed rounds go to startups in SF and NY (and really, mostly SF) (we'll be dropping a report on "the state of seed" from Carta tomorrow on our official substack) But it's data like...
Web2’s Viral Loop Mastery Disappeared with Its Billionaires
BRAINDUMP ON VIRAL LOOPS #1 The golden age of Web 2.0 (~2005-2010) was a special time for viral products, which were systematically engineered to reach millions of people. Back then, people were building the first versions of things we take for...
Viral Loops Evolved: From Invites to AI-Driven Growth
VIRAL LOOPS IN 2025 VS 2010 The term "viral loop" was coined nearly 20 years ago. In its purest form, it describes the series of actions that it takes for a new product to grow virally, with one group of users...
Startups Use Proxy Metrics to Fake Early Traction
SHOWING TRACTION BEFORE YOU HAVE TRACTION Everybody knows that startups thrive when they have “real” traction — that is revenue, active users, great retention curves, and a fast growth rate. However, startups also find themselves in a catch-22 where they're not...