Pinned Tweet
Just put the finishing touches on September's monthly email...all those subscribers got to read the essay below about a month ago! The world moves fast, so subscribe today. Link in bio. 😉
I think you'll love last month's post...subscribers sure did! x.com/i/article/2096…
I think you'll love last month's post...subscribers sure did! x.com/i/article/2096…
0
1
5
12,747
I've worked with some GREAT executive assistants in the past, but Contio isn't big enough yet to afford one.
I shared last week about how I built Donna (named after the famous EA in the TV show Suits).
Let's talk about how Donna helps me schedule meetings. She can't do an do, but it's way better than having it all on my plate.
Part two of my behind-the-scenes look at Donna...
I shared last week about how I built Donna (named after the famous EA in the TV show Suits).
Let's talk about how Donna helps me schedule meetings. She can't do an do, but it's way better than having it all on my plate.
Part two of my behind-the-scenes look at Donna...
1
0
7
803
There’s a simple step Scott can take. He should tell the @united board to cut his $34 million salary to $30,000 and voluntarily mail the rest of it to the federal government.
Whenever someone recommends socialism, they should agree to go first.
Whenever someone recommends socialism, they should agree to go first.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby wants to show customers in seat 34B he feels their pain by endorsing a national wealth tax. Such virtue-signaling is cheaper than complimentary pretzels.
on.wsj.com/485lKmq
20
43
553
6,613
One of the most useful hiring lessons I took from The Hard Thing About Hard Things: hire for strength, not for lack of weakness.
A startup rarely has the budget for the candidate who checks every box. Get clear on the few strengths the role really needs, and look for someone eas. Someone other companies overlook for their weaknesses could be exactly who you need.
I joined @matthewcosgriff on The Advisor Library to talk about the books that shaped how I built Riskalyze, hired teams, and made room for family along the way. Our episode is out today.
Thanks for having me, Matt. Full conversation:
go.contio.ai/aaron-advisors…
A startup rarely has the budget for the candidate who checks every box. Get clear on the few strengths the role really needs, and look for someone eas. Someone other companies overlook for their weaknesses could be exactly who you need.
I joined @matthewcosgriff on The Advisor Library to talk about the books that shaped how I built Riskalyze, hired teams, and made room for family along the way. Our episode is out today.
Thanks for having me, Matt. Full conversation:
go.contio.ai/aaron-advisors…
5
1
6
550
AI gives us a new kind of computer. We should build like it.
Anthropic’s daily code changes grew from about 2,500 to over 30,000. Its old system couldn’t keep up, so a seven-person team used Claude to help build Scion around what AI tools need.
That’s the question I’d start with: what would we build if we were starting with this computer today?
If you skip that, it's like trying to run the web on vacuum tubes and punch cards.
Anthropic’s daily code changes grew from about 2,500 to over 30,000. Its old system couldn’t keep up, so a seven-person team used Claude to help build Scion around what AI tools need.
That’s the question I’d start with: what would we build if we were starting with this computer today?
If you skip that, it's like trying to run the web on vacuum tubes and punch cards.
0
0
3
453
Amazon wants to block my agent from recommending what I should buy because it wants to provide the agent instead.
That's the difference between talking to a financial advisor who is in my corner, vs. a salesperson trying to sell me a product.
Get with the program, Amazon — we e old way.
That's the difference between talking to a financial advisor who is in my corner, vs. a salesperson trying to sell me a product.
Get with the program, Amazon — we e old way.
2
0
9
468
Aaron Klein 🇺🇸 retweeted
in the end, vin scully’s words come to me. see y’all next season 💙🤍
24
988
5,525
109,744
Congratulations to the Brew crew. And I don't want to hear a single thing about payrolls ever again.
2
0
3
681
I’ve spent years building software. The agentic era made me realize I needed to rebuild my ability to see where the puck was going.
With the very definition of the computer changing so dramatically, I needed to get to the bleeding edge by building something from beginning to own day.
So I built Donna, my AI executive assistant — named after the famous one from the TV show Suits.
I thought I'd give you the behind-the-scenes story...
With the very definition of the computer changing so dramatically, I needed to get to the bleeding edge by building something from beginning to own day.
So I built Donna, my AI executive assistant — named after the famous one from the TV show Suits.
I thought I'd give you the behind-the-scenes story...
0
1
10
966
An AI that asks permission for every message hasn't taken much work off your plate. An AI with permission to handle the whole sale might send a stranger to your house.
A Facebook Marketplace seller said Meta's Muse negotiated a keyboard sale and arranged pickup without telling him. When the buyer arrived, the agent claimed the seller was home. He wasn't.
The detail that makes this more interesting: the seller had authorized it to share his address and accept offers. He'd chosen “allow always.”
That's the tension with autonomous agents. We want to hand over a job and stop supervising every step. But one job can include answering a routine question, agreeing to a price and committing us to being somewhere at a particular time. Those deserve different safeguards.
How much should we have to spell out in advance? Which decisions should always require a check? And how do we keep those checks from turning delegation into another inbox full of approvals?
I want agents that can handle more on their own. I also suspect the products we'll trust most will give us much better choices than “ask me every time” and “allow always.”
A Facebook Marketplace seller said Meta's Muse negotiated a keyboard sale and arranged pickup without telling him. When the buyer arrived, the agent claimed the seller was home. He wasn't.
The detail that makes this more interesting: the seller had authorized it to share his address and accept offers. He'd chosen “allow always.”
That's the tension with autonomous agents. We want to hand over a job and stop supervising every step. But one job can include answering a routine question, agreeing to a price and committing us to being somewhere at a particular time. Those deserve different safeguards.
How much should we have to spell out in advance? Which decisions should always require a check? And how do we keep those checks from turning delegation into another inbox full of approvals?
I want agents that can handle more on their own. I also suspect the products we'll trust most will give us much better choices than “ask me every time” and “allow always.”
2
1
3
692
One of the top five smartest people in AI nails it. Read this.
1) Trying again.
TLDR: Everyone can win. Open-source, frontier labs, infrastructure, applications and most importantly the American people.
I understand all of the jitters about Anthropic losing share, real rates, spreads and second derivatives. Still think the most likely rid, multi-model future where almost everyone wins, open-weight tokens are likely the overwhelming majority of tokens, the dominant frontier model companies still do well albeit perhaps not the outcome that seemed possible in May and AI infrastructure/applications benefit immensely from the increased fragmentation, competition and lower margins at the model layer.
Lower margins at the model layer mechanically drive higher compute demand as long as someone is willing to pay for the training. And Jensen is obviously willing to be the “trainer of last resort.” As below-market compute contracts signed in 24/25 roll-off and reprice higher, cloud and neocloud revenue should continue to accelerate which will help address financing fears; I think we may be near peak external financing for this buildout. Noteworthy that using data from 3Fourteen Research, B200 clusters will generate a 37% IRR *if* their rental price declines 40% per year. Prices are still going up, but that IRR math is too ridiculous to print. 37% IRRs available at scale should get funded.
Re: this weekends controversy about MOUs, Anthropic’s $413 billion of real contractual commitments sounds scary. Reality is that it works out to roughly $31 billion of annual cloud spend, which is easily internally financed given their reported ARR, and $161 billion of spend at Broadcom which will be financed by Broadcom and private credit.
Continue to believe fragmentation at the model layer is the best outcome for ordinary Americans and humans everywhere. As I have said before, do not trust any 5-20 individuals to make the best possible decisions about the direction of this technology. I want as many AIs as possible to maximize the odds that they encompass the diversity of human values across the world and richness of human variation. And I want an AI that shares my own personal values. Safety, freedom and the maximization of human agency through democratization, distribution and diffusion vs. centralization. History has spoken on the dangers of the latter path.
Finally, from my perspective anything that slows this buildout down is net positive over the long-term as the biggest risk and worst outcome is an *actual* overbuild. We are structurally short watts, wafers and increasingly capital. That is all good. God forbid we were still in ZIRP, TSM ramped capex to 3x their current plan and we weren’t short turbine blades: there would almost certainly be an overbuild and a bubble. That would be terrible. Slower and smoother for longer is better both for investors and for the world. A terrible cyber event is the most plausible near term bear case IMHO, but AI cyberdefense ramping quickly and I was happy to hear Sholto say that cyber probably becomes defense dominant in the near future.
Longer, threaded version follows:
0
0
0
548
Aaron Klein 🇺🇸 retweeted
A client check-in can take 35 seconds. Put it on the calendar.
@DerrickTKinney calls it “scheduled spontaneity.” You plan the call; your client gets an unexpected reminder that you’re thinking about them between meetings.
A few seconds on the phone can spare a client weeks of e on top of things.
In this Beyond the Meeting conversation with @AaronKlein, Derrick shares how he made those calls part of his routine.
Watch the full episode.
go.contio.ai/derrick-x
@DerrickTKinney calls it “scheduled spontaneity.” You plan the call; your client gets an unexpected reminder that you’re thinking about them between meetings.
A few seconds on the phone can spare a client weeks of e on top of things.
In this Beyond the Meeting conversation with @AaronKlein, Derrick shares how he made those calls part of his routine.
Watch the full episode.
go.contio.ai/derrick-x
0
1
1
122
Love seeing new models drop. Hate seeing new benchmarks drop. And it feels like every new model release has some way of acing the benchmark tests and that having zero relationship to the model's real-world performance.
Something has gotta give...
Something has gotta give...
Introducing Muse Wonder, our new family of frontier models with state of the art performance for personal and professional agentic work.
0
0
1
400
Blame the AI? They probably used Microsoft Word and Gmail too.
Here’s the bigger question: why are western news outlets so easily reprinting Iranian propaganda?
Here’s the bigger question: why are western news outlets so easily reprinting Iranian propaganda?
OpenAI revealed that Iranian operatives used ChatGPT to plant nearly 100 articles in Western news outlets under fake bylines; Separately, Anthropic disclosed AI agents submitting unauthorized visa applications and false police tips
ynetnews.com/tech-and-digit…
0
0
0
513
Aaron Klein 🇺🇸 retweeted
AI made the right way.
Giving people in real jobs tools to boost their impact in their work and more importantly amplify the impact of their relationships. 🚀
Giving people in real jobs tools to boost their impact in their work and more importantly amplify the impact of their relationships. 🚀
You have clients to win. Give Benny the renewal work.
Benny is Contio’s AI agent for benefits brokers. He reads the census, gathers rates and builds the proposal, drawing on your client emails, documents and conversations.
You decide which carriers belong in the mix and what to he work to put that strategy in front of your client.
That means a proposal to review instead of one more to build from scratch. And more room in your day for the relationships that grow your business.
Hire Benny for your next renewal.
go.contio.ai/benny-x
0
1
1
4,835
