You've gotta spend money to make money I don't know how many AI startups there are in the world, but I have looked at hundreds of them in the last 18 months. Let's assume I've seen only a small fraction of what actually exists, and the numbers get staggering quickly. I've written recently about why, despite quick early sales traction, it is pressingly difficult for AI companies to get renewals. I've also written about why most AI projects fail before they start. These are not especially...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Seattle vs. San Francisco As a long time Seattleite who has traveled to Silicon Valley a ton over the last decade, my trips always follow a predictable trajectory: Day 1Wow! It is like Stanford meets Disneyland here! Everyone is living in the future! This place is magical! Day 2I love the intensity. I am using my brain in stretchy ways, talking to smart people about interesting problems. (Also, my kids are in Seattle and I am only responsible for myself, so yes I can meet you for that 9pm...
18 days ago • 3 min read
Data story fails Over the last year, I have uncovered a lot of interesting data about how work works. For instance, who knew that a third of job candidates are straight-up ghosted after completing interview loops? (Everyone who has ever interviewed for a job, that's who.) I also discovered exactly how AI has absolutely destroyed my inbox, and that foundation models have statistical bias baked in. And lots more. Sometimes the data turns out to be exactly what I expected. Yay? I guess it's nice...
25 days ago • 3 min read
How not to do operations [Setting: An exec team is meeting for their monthly metrics review. It is 4pm on a busy Thursday afternoon. Several people sit around a large oval conference room table. A few of them type rapidly at their laptops. The rest are rapt with attention, listening to the speaker.] CEO: So where are we with AI? [execs look at each other uncomfortably, 60 very long seconds of silence go by] CTO [sheepishly speaks up]: Well, we've got some great features in the pipeline! CEO:...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
How the AI gold rush is going Last year, I wrote a popular piece about why it is hard to sell AI software. I discussed the AI gold rush dynamic, where AI companies initially find it easy to raise money but then much more difficult past Series A. In the situation I described, businesses didn't know how to buy AI tools yet, and for startups, competing with big incumbents was even harder than before. It's now one year later, and most organizations have figured out how to buy AI tools by now. As...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
A change is gonna come Over the last three weeks, we've looked at career change patterns among executives. We saw that most CEOs and C-suite leaders of the AI 50 have changed careers several times, while Fortune 100 execs have changed much less often. We also saw that, among execs, career changers are more likely to hire other career changers, and that execs hired in the last 12 months are more likely to be career changers than in previous years. This got me curious about two things: We've...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Emergency In the book The Mysterious Benedict Society, all the action takes place in the backdrop of The Emergency, a constant news cycle of one frenetic catastrophe after another. It's a fantastic book series, double plus recommend. But though I read it several years ago, I can't get this one detail out of my head right now. Because real life has never reminded me more of The Emergency. There are many ways people try to cope with a steady diet of stress and chaos: political activism,...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Change careers, start an AI company Last week, we looked at CEO and C-suite leaders in the AI 50 to see how many of them have a history of making significant career changes. 76% of the AI CEOs had at least two different kinds of careers before starting their current companies. Interesting but maybe not surprising, since CEO-founders tend to be a non-linear bunch. More contrary to conventional wisdom is that 64% of other AI C-suiters also have major career changes in their past. They are HR...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Cha-cha-cha changes You have probably held several jobs over the course of your career. Most likely, you've changed managers or teams or companies. You may have gotten promoted into new job titles and responsibilities. Or perhaps you've made more dramatic shifts and changed up your professional identity entirely. Broadly speaking, ambitious people building successful careers fall into two categories: Incremental growers: Spend years becoming world-class at their jobs, building domain...
2 months ago • 3 min read