Pinned Tweet
The 3 unsung heroes of the startup ecosystem:
• Spouses with stable jobs
• Friends who are lawyers
• Parents who never waver
• Spouses with stable jobs
• Friends who are lawyers
• Parents who never waver
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Update: Returning to X after 3 years and reading my old hot takes is sometimes painful.
> Claiming to understand much about building a company as a VC → More humility and empathy since
> Blue checkmark on X will fail → Clearly wrong (see profile)
> Energy tech will be big → Partly right (see AI)
> Vertical AI startups will be big but Horizontal AI startups will be bigger (eg. Legora vs Lovable) → Pending
> Thinking BeReal/Clubhouse would be the next big thing → Don’t hate a girl for hoping
> Advocating for the rise of Metaverse → Urgh
Now: Let’s see how wrong I can get in the coming three years.
> Claiming to understand much about building a company as a VC → More humility and empathy since
> Blue checkmark on X will fail → Clearly wrong (see profile)
> Energy tech will be big → Partly right (see AI)
> Vertical AI startups will be big but Horizontal AI startups will be bigger (eg. Legora vs Lovable) → Pending
> Thinking BeReal/Clubhouse would be the next big thing → Don’t hate a girl for hoping
> Advocating for the rise of Metaverse → Urgh
Now: Let’s see how wrong I can get in the coming three years.
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Beata Klein retweeted
I think most companies blocking AI agents today will end up regretting that decision.
@tobi put it well on @alexeheath's podcast: go back to problem-solving mode. Companies need to think in first principles again instead of building higher walls.
Amazon blocks agents because it has an ads business to protect. But ads only make money while a human looks at the page. Agents don’t look.
I rebooked a missed chair delivery with Instinct. One 25-second voice note, then the agent did 8 back-and-forths with the company. 30 seconds of my time instead of 20 minutes.
Customers won’t want to do that themselves again. Blocking is a short-term fix.
@tobi put it well on @alexeheath's podcast: go back to problem-solving mode. Companies need to think in first principles again instead of building higher walls.
Amazon blocks agents because it has an ads business to protect. But ads only make money while a human looks at the page. Agents don’t look.
I rebooked a missed chair delivery with Instinct. One 25-second voice note, then the agent did 8 back-and-forths with the company. 30 seconds of my time instead of 20 minutes.
Customers won’t want to do that themselves again. Blocking is a short-term fix.
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
@tobi on where agent commerce is headed, sci-fi becoming reality, and his GPU wine cellar.
Why did Amazon block Meta's Muse but Shopify welcomed it? I sit down with Tobi in Toronto to discuss why the companies are ches to agents and how shopping changes when AI starts buying things on your behalf.
He explains the early AI shopping behavior he’s seeing. We also get into why he thinks AI makes starting a business easier, the backlash against the technology, and why everyone will eventually have to embrace it to get ahead in their careers.
We get into how AI agents will make money, who pays when they handle a purchase, and why advertising gets complicated when your assistant is supposed to work for you. We discuss his experience on Meta’s board and working with Mark Zuckerberg.
Lütke also shares why he turned his wine cellar into a GPU server rack and how he uses his personal AI agent that runs entirely from his house.
This is one of my favorite pods I've ever done.
Timestamps:
00:00 Amazon blocks Muse
02:40 Shopify's approach to AI agents
07:00 How AI agents will change shopping
11:05 Sci-fi and tech optimism
17:57 Zero-sum thinking vs. abundance
21:20 AI backlash and the founder advantage
45:28 Building an AI-first Shopify
52:18 Who profits from agentic commerce?
01:03:22 How Shopify stays ahead
01:10:39 Advertising and discovery in the agent era
01:16:02 Rack, Cellar, and Claw
Links:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/71xOyc…
Substack: sourcesnews.substack.com/p/tobi-lutke-s…
YouTube: youtu.be/r9SHzCW9zxo
Apple Podcasts: sources.news/p/tobi-lutke-s…
This episode's presenting sponsor is @hyperagentapp
Thanks to the show’s premiere sponsors: @Atlassian, @meetgranola, and @mercury
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Beata Klein retweeted
Companies use the term FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer) for two quite different roles that a lot of people misunderstand.
It gets treated as the golden weapon to destroy any problem, but what’s missed is that it’s actually split into two different jobs.
In my view, FDEs fall into two categories:
- Type 1 FDEs build 80-90% of the solution with each customer.
- Type 2 FDEs work on top of a product that already delivers most of the value, and bridge the last mile by connecting the backends and setting up the customer’s logic inside the platform.
This matters for two reasons, it tells you:
1. Whether you’re building a product or a service business
2. Who you specifically need to hire, because each type needs a different profile.
We wanted one platform where customers could build their own agents on top of it.
That is a Type 2 model.
A bunch of smart founders are hiring FDEs right now.
But it’s important to know which type you’re hiring: Ask yourself how much of the solution exists before the FDE shows up.
If the product already delivers most of it, it’s a Type 2.
If the FDE builds most of it with the customer, it’s a Type 1.
That decides how you build the product and which salespeople & FDEs you hire.
It gets treated as the golden weapon to destroy any problem, but what’s missed is that it’s actually split into two different jobs.
In my view, FDEs fall into two categories:
- Type 1 FDEs build 80-90% of the solution with each customer.
- Type 2 FDEs work on top of a product that already delivers most of the value, and bridge the last mile by connecting the backends and setting up the customer’s logic inside the platform.
This matters for two reasons, it tells you:
1. Whether you’re building a product or a service business
2. Who you specifically need to hire, because each type needs a different profile.
We wanted one platform where customers could build their own agents on top of it.
That is a Type 2 model.
A bunch of smart founders are hiring FDEs right now.
But it’s important to know which type you’re hiring: Ask yourself how much of the solution exists before the FDE shows up.
If the product already delivers most of it, it’s a Type 2.
If the FDE builds most of it with the customer, it’s a Type 1.
That decides how you build the product and which salespeople & FDEs you hire.
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Beata Klein retweeted
If anyone can build an agent, your edge is…
- Deterministic boundaries on critical actions
- Only the right context at the right moment
- Guardrails that hold under pressure
- Evals that define good before you ship
- Successful agent-to-agent interactions
- Authentication when calls are agent-to-agent
- Dedicated capacity so latency holds at peak
- Observability once agents are loose in production
- Deterministic boundaries on critical actions
- Only the right context at the right moment
- Guardrails that hold under pressure
- Evals that define good before you ship
- Successful agent-to-agent interactions
- Authentication when calls are agent-to-agent
- Dedicated capacity so latency holds at peak
- Observability once agents are loose in production
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Beata Klein retweeted
nothing short of incredible continued growth displayed by @bernhardsson and team @modal.
so very impressive.
massive congrats on this double milestone
very proud for @creandum to be a part of this journey since first round (led by @AmplifyPartners & @sarahcat21 - stellar job)
so very impressive.
massive congrats on this double milestone
very proud for @creandum to be a part of this journey since first round (led by @AmplifyPartners & @sarahcat21 - stellar job)
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Beata Klein retweeted
I'm not cancelling ChatGPT just to have Claude code me a fucking snowman.
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Beata Klein retweeted
building software to build software is the best
it's fun, you automatically dogfood your own product, and as you improve it you get to move faster
it's fun, you automatically dogfood your own product, and as you improve it you get to move faster
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Beata Klein retweeted
A Harvard professor once invited some students over to dinner.
I ended up sitting next to him, and halfway through the evening he told a story about a student he’d once wanted as a teaching assistant for his computer science class.
The student said no. He had something important going on.
So I asked who it was.
He said the student was Mark Zuckerberg...
That dinner was one of the most memorable moments that pushed my thinking of ambition.
Anyone who makes an impact is just an ordinary human like you and me.
So here’s what I do now:
1. I reset the bar the second we reach it.
When we raised our seed at a $20M valuation, I told the team our next target was 50x. We hit the billion. Then I told them we’re aiming for $50B.
2. I hire for ambition over résumé.
Grit, intellectual capability and ambition matter more than anything else. Experience tells you what a person has already done, but if the goal has never been done, my team needs something else.
3. I allow myself to break things that work.
At the end of 2022, we had a product and customers, but we need to rebuild it on LLMs. So we took 95% of our engineers off the revenue-generating product and spent 18 months fixing it.
4. I’m always willing to dive deeper.
You delegate ownership as you scale, but when something isn’t at the bar you believe it should be, go in yourself and reset it. Gets your hands dirty.
5. I ask customers about the impossible.
I’m never asking about things we could ship in three months, I want to know what 10x solution would look like for them. Always aim for the moon.
One of our core values: “If other people aren’t telling you that your ambitions sound crazy, you’re probably not thinking big enough.”
I ended up sitting next to him, and halfway through the evening he told a story about a student he’d once wanted as a teaching assistant for his computer science class.
The student said no. He had something important going on.
So I asked who it was.
He said the student was Mark Zuckerberg...
That dinner was one of the most memorable moments that pushed my thinking of ambition.
Anyone who makes an impact is just an ordinary human like you and me.
So here’s what I do now:
1. I reset the bar the second we reach it.
When we raised our seed at a $20M valuation, I told the team our next target was 50x. We hit the billion. Then I told them we’re aiming for $50B.
2. I hire for ambition over résumé.
Grit, intellectual capability and ambition matter more than anything else. Experience tells you what a person has already done, but if the goal has never been done, my team needs something else.
3. I allow myself to break things that work.
At the end of 2022, we had a product and customers, but we need to rebuild it on LLMs. So we took 95% of our engineers off the revenue-generating product and spent 18 months fixing it.
4. I’m always willing to dive deeper.
You delegate ownership as you scale, but when something isn’t at the bar you believe it should be, go in yourself and reset it. Gets your hands dirty.
5. I ask customers about the impossible.
I’m never asking about things we could ship in three months, I want to know what 10x solution would look like for them. Always aim for the moon.
One of our core values: “If other people aren’t telling you that your ambitions sound crazy, you’re probably not thinking big enough.”
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Beata Klein retweeted
Being unfazed by rejection is one of the main traits you learn as a founder.
During our seed round, we spoke to 40+ investors and we also got a life-changing acquisition offer.
We could have sold Parloa. But we didn’t.
On December 23, with two weeks of runway left, one investor said yes.
It changed our company’s trajectory
We’ve raised $550M+ since then and we’re building what we dreamed of back then.
If you’re facing rejection, remember… it only takes ONE yes.
During our seed round, we spoke to 40+ investors and we also got a life-changing acquisition offer.
We could have sold Parloa. But we didn’t.
On December 23, with two weeks of runway left, one investor said yes.
It changed our company’s trajectory
We’ve raised $550M+ since then and we’re building what we dreamed of back then.
If you’re facing rejection, remember… it only takes ONE yes.
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Beata Klein retweeted
The news of the past days has reinforced that Al is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes, and it is arriving much faster than Europe is planning for.
Leading researchers and experts have been working hard on a serious attempt to fix that, proposing a Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. It's been led by @privitera_ and @MonikaSchnitzer, with contributors including @bakkermichiel, @Ph_Aghion, @vestager and @Yoshua_Bengio.
Personally, I particularly strongly agree with the following objectives: Reliable access to frontier Al, 15% of global Al compute by 2030, a member state alliance for supply chain security, institutions that move quickly, and fast-growing European companies.
A piece I would like to emphasize, and add more weight to, is also the importance of international coordination for ensuring a safe AI transition.
This will take courage and decisive action. Europe has done hard things before. Time to do it again.
If you care, please forward this to people that would get value in learning about what is at stake and what we can do.
transformative-ai.eu
Leading researchers and experts have been working hard on a serious attempt to fix that, proposing a Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. It's been led by @privitera_ and @MonikaSchnitzer, with contributors including @bakkermichiel, @Ph_Aghion, @vestager and @Yoshua_Bengio.
Personally, I particularly strongly agree with the following objectives: Reliable access to frontier Al, 15% of global Al compute by 2030, a member state alliance for supply chain security, institutions that move quickly, and fast-growing European companies.
A piece I would like to emphasize, and add more weight to, is also the importance of international coordination for ensuring a safe AI transition.
This will take courage and decisive action. Europe has done hard things before. Time to do it again.
If you care, please forward this to people that would get value in learning about what is at stake and what we can do.
transformative-ai.eu
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Beata Klein retweeted
Nice news to start the week: We’ve raised our 7th Fund with €500m from some of the world’s top investors to continue backing Europe’s most ambitious founders.
Exciting news! We’ve just closed our 7th fund, raising €500m to find and back Europe’s winners at Seed and Series A 💚
Here’s a little video we made to introduce the new fund...
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@collibra @puremlHQ @MonitaurAI @CredoAI @latticeflowai @ai_saidot @TrustibleAI @LumenovaAI @SuperwiseAI @truera_ai @WhyLabs @censius @langfuse @humanloop @helicone_ai @GradientJAI @LastMile @honeyhiveai @AutoblocksAI @credal_ai @LakeraAI @mindgard @hiddenlayersec @lmqllang @commonbaseHQ @MithrilSecurity @guardrails_ai @ProtectAICorp @prometheuxlabs @fiddlerlabs @giskard_ai @arizeai @xpdeep_corp @gretel_ai @privateAIcom @privacera Federated learning: @FEDML_AI, @apheris_AI, @bitfount, @dynamo_fl, @integrateAI
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@collibra @puremlHQ @MonitaurAI @CredoAI @latticeflowai @ai_saidot @TrustibleAI @LumenovaAI @SuperwiseAI @truera_ai @WhyLabs @censius @langfuse @humanloop @helicone_ai @GradientJAI @LastMile @honeyhiveai @AutoblocksAI @credal_ai @LakeraAI @mindgard @hiddenlayersec @lmqllang @commonbaseHQ @MithrilSecurity @guardrails_ai @ProtectAICorp @prometheuxlabs @fiddlerlabs @giskard_ai @arizeai @xpdeep_corp @gretel_ai @privateAIcom @privacera @FEDML_AI @apheris_AI @bitfount @dynamo_fl @integrateAI We also explore where we see the world of security & governance for GenAI is going next. As ever, if you are building in the space, we would love to talk to you.
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Beata Klein retweeted
today we're launching amie.so — anyone can start using it now.
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