Every customer has the one workflow no vendor will ever build for them.
Now they can build it themselves.
Smart companies will hand them the tools, not fight it 🔑
x.com/saranormous/st…
Now they can build it themselves.
Smart companies will hand them the tools, not fight it 🔑
x.com/saranormous/st…
a few years ago, I started out skeptical that many non-engineers really wanted to make/mod their own personal software -- but I've come around, think I was wrong. range of desires from:
- I feel so powerful
- no one will make me the workflow/personalization I need
- can I just PM the product for a few weeks and fix this thing that is driving me crazy
obvious in retrospect, but if the ease:power ratio is good enough, of course people will make their own software
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We launched chatbots at Drift in 2015.
The lesson then is the lesson now:
Customers don't want to talk to a bot.
They want their problem solved.
The lesson then is the lesson now:
Customers don't want to talk to a bot.
They want their problem solved.
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Fortunate to have built conversational products before it was cool.
Grateful to be backing the founders building what comes next 🙏🏽⚡️
Grateful to be backing the founders building what comes next 🙏🏽⚡️
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Unpopular opinion:
AI won't kill SaaS.
It'll kill the companies that stopped listening to customers.
AI won't kill SaaS.
It'll kill the companies that stopped listening to customers.
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We said it on Seeking Wisdom back in 2016:
The companies winning are the ones closest to the customer.
AI didn't change that. It just raised the cost of being far away.
The companies winning are the ones closest to the customer.
AI didn't change that. It just raised the cost of being far away.
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AI makes everyone a builder.
Which means the only real advantage left is *people*.
Hire accordingly.
Which means the only real advantage left is *people*.
Hire accordingly.
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At HubSpot, CRM was where reps logged what already happened.
Next, it does the work before they ask.
We're closer to that than most people think ⚡️
x.com/saranormous/st…
Next, it does the work before they ask.
We're closer to that than most people think ⚡️
x.com/saranormous/st…
we remain in the autocomplete / early claude code era of enterprise workflow automation, but not for long
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CRM doesn't belong to sales anymore.
With Performable, we were the first to put it inside marketing tech.
Agents will erase the line for good 🙏🏽
With Performable, we were the first to put it inside marketing tech.
Agents will erase the line for good 🙏🏽
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Customers don't want AI features.
They want the product to just know them.
That's the bar now ⚡️
x.com/saranormous/st…
They want the product to just know them.
That's the bar now ⚡️
x.com/saranormous/st…
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Best measure of a company isn't the exit.
It's what your people go on to build.
Some of my proudest moments are cheering on the HubSpot and Drift crew building what's next 🙏🏽
x.com/alexandr_wang/…
It's what your people go on to build.
Some of my proudest moments are cheering on the HubSpot and Drift crew building what's next 🙏🏽
x.com/alexandr_wang/…
THE SCALE MAFIA
one of the most special parts of starting a company is watching the people you fought and bled with in the early days go out and change the world.
the Scale crew was supernatural. @scale_AI was one of the first companies to IOI and IMO-maxx, and the magic of hese geniuses gave a shit and ran through walls. it's no wonder that the Scale mafia is the first true mafia of the modern tech era. just to name a few:
- cognition founder @stevenkplus1 & president @russelljkaplan
- modal founder @akshat_b
- tech & science advisor to POTUS @mkratsios47
- claude code head of product @_catwu
- kpcb partners @LM_Braswell & @nayakkayak
- bun founder @jarredsumner
- tbd head of product @lindugong
- netic founder @melisatokmak
- cobot founder @BradPorter_
- secureframe founder @shravvmehtaa
- paramount skydance cfo @DennisKCinelli
- thinking machines gc lauren lennon
- partner at greylock @sophia_luo_
- liquid ai coo jeffrey li
- gallatin ai founder @agilemofo
- tbd safety @_julianmichael_
- center for ai safety president @devindkim
[photo courtesy the beautiful wedding of @thenateherman (who in many ways was a cofounder of Scale) and @ChristinaG325]
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We dreamed about 1:1 marketing at HubSpot.
Agents finally make it real.
The bar now: personal, not just personalized 🙏🏽
x.com/gabepereyra/st…
Agents finally make it real.
The bar now: personal, not just personalized 🙏🏽
x.com/gabepereyra/st…
How @ShawnFarsai uses @figma @ElevenLabs and @claudeai to create hyper personalized marketing videos with agents x.com/i/article/2112…
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There is no work-life balance when you're starting a company.
There's only the work you love and the people you love.
Protect both 🙏🏽
There's only the work you love and the people you love.
Protect both 🙏🏽
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The best employees don't wait to be told.
If your AI only answers questions, it's not an employee. It's a search box.
x.com/elonmusk/statu…
If your AI only answers questions, it's not an employee. It's a search box.
x.com/elonmusk/statu…
Grok @bot might turn out to be your favorite employee
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Your customers will tell you exactly what to build.
You just have to stop talking long enough to hear them.
You just have to stop talking long enough to hear them.
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"Sometimes, but not always, better than you."
Best one-line description of AI I've read.
Congrats Ethan 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
x.com/emollick/statu…
Best one-line description of AI I've read.
Congrats Ethan 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
x.com/emollick/statu…
My new book, Co-Existence, is out today. It is a guide to how to live & work in a world where AI is sometimes, but not always, better than you.
(And, for the release, I worked with Opus 5.5 to make a quite interesting experience for the book's website: co-existence.ai)
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We learned this at Drift.
A chat window isn't the experience. It's just the doorway.
The value is what happens *after* the conversation.
x.com/emollick/statu…
A chat window isn't the experience. It's just the doorway.
The value is what happens *after* the conversation.
x.com/emollick/statu…
Multiplayer AI needs to move past the group chat phase. Chats are chaotic, everyone sees everything (creating social & management issues), and they're bad for long projects. Worse, they keep AI trapped inside existing teams, when its real promise is working & helping across them.
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The model isn't the hard part anymore.
Getting it into the hands of the people who do the work is.
Same lesson as SaaS. Distribution beats product.
x.com/levie/status/2…
Getting it into the hands of the people who do the work is.
Same lesson as SaaS. Distribution beats product.
x.com/levie/status/2…
The big bitter lesson question in the applied AI layer is that as models get better and better, what is the best way to diffuse that intelligence into an enterprise.
Ironically, I’d argue that as models are getting more capable, and can handle longer running tasks and better tool use, the ability to differentiate on a domain by domain basis goes up instead of down.
When models were quite limited in what they could do, ironically all you could be literally was a “wrapper” because you were effectively delivering tokens back to the user with a custom prompt or some limited RAG.
But in a world of agents using tools, tasks that run on for hours or days, workflows that kick off agents, agent swarms that need to be coordinated against a goal, data sources that are domain specific, model routing that requires domain-specific routing, implementation that requires real change management of the workflow instead of “just type into this chat box”, it’s very very possible that specialization of these systems goes up more.
Obviously this doesn’t apply to everything - the closer you are to the labs core use-cases the tougher this play gets, but I’d argue we’re going to see autonomous systems for a wide range of job functions that weren’t practical to build out before. We’ll see this in security, life sciences, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and many other fields. Either way going to be a fun and wild couple of years.
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