diffusing models, fmr @thrivecapital
nyc
Joined September 2016
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incredible opportunity to work with an incredible guy!
high autonomy internship to run your own business with an ai agent
Some news: 5 months ago I joined @coreauto, a small research lab focused on new ways for models to learn. I’m also hiring four interns to do something my younger self would've loved.
It started with a pretty unusual project. We set up a handful of small online businesses, and put an agent in charge. We gave each business some initial funding and a seed idea, and off they went, trying to sell real things to real customers while we watched. It’s about as open-ended and unforgiving a task as you can probably give to an agent, with countless decisions to make and effects that take time to become clear.
Each business got its own bank account, a debit card to pay suppliers, a web browser, an email inbox, a domain name, cloud infrastructure and a schedule. Every few hours, the agent woke up and decided what to do. It might update a landing page, adjust an ad campaign, reply to a customer, and then go back to sleep.
The agents built actual storefronts and apps. They bought ads, attracted visitors, and even made some sales. The agents acted as operators that kept a business moving, but we noticed they never really stepped back to strategize about what might move the needle. If people weren’t buying, why? Was the landing page unappealing? Or maybe the offer itself was the problem?
One amusing example was the very first order a customer placed. Our supplier had run out of stock. But it’s a dropshipping business, and thankfully tens of other suppliers carried the same product. Instead of trying another supplier, the agent almost immediately sent the customer a polite apology and attempted to issue a refund. Gah! So close!
The agents could handle much of the work of getting a business up and running. What they struggled with was deciding what to change when it wasn’t working.
That’s what we want to understand. We also want to see what changes when people take the lead. What does a business operator actually do all day when agents can do so much? What new work does this allow them to do? Which decisions can’t be delegated?
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So this winter we're hiring 4 interns as Associate General Managers. Associate Product Manager internships are programs that give early career generalists a product to own. We want to try something similar, but with entire businesses.
You’ll create and grow businesses, with agents handling the routine work so you can focus on figuring out what matters. Each AGM gets a budget and our agent infrastructure that’s designed for this. Which ideas to try is up to you. Put more money behind what finds customers and keep refining.
Where you step in tells us what agents can't do yet. You'll be in our SF office with me and people I’m so fortunate to work with, like @_arohan_, @joannejang, @MillionInt, @marksaroufim and @juliacvillagra
We don't care much where you went to school or what your resume looks like. We’re looking for enterprising people with a drive to create, who’ve made money on the internet before and already use AI extensively to enable their ideas. If that sounds like you: coreauto.com/AGM
Daniel is still somehow incredibly underrated.
He was a joy to work with on the 5.6 launch and continually one ups himself.
video was made by Cyrus Rosen, a good friend from college. happy to intro anyone!
six months ago, i started a business to teach small businesses how to use ai.
daniel was our first client. he runs a cleaning supply company.
he taught me what an erp was and what MOQ stands for. he even let me stay with him in his apartment after a single call...
he now uses ai to help with reporting, analyzing his business, and generating leads for new territories he's expanding to. how he uses ai is the least interesting part.
so, here's a video about him and his incredible business.
i hope you enjoy
six months ago, i started a business to teach small businesses how to use ai.
daniel was our first client. he runs a cleaning supply company.
he taught me what an erp was and what MOQ stands for. he even let me stay with him in his apartment after a single call...
he now uses ai to help with reporting, analyzing his business, and generating leads for new territories he's expanding to. how he uses ai is the least interesting part.
so, here's a video about him and his incredible business.
i hope you enjoy
if you talk to anyone outside of our bubble on a regular basis this should be obvious.
the interesting thing is that much of the opposition is not merely because it powers ai. rather, they are noisy, suspect (jasmi.news/p/no-data-centers…), and benefit only the "oligarchs."
for the past ~6 months, i've been deploying ai to small businesses across america in kentucky, north dakota, massachusetts, georgia, and a few in new york.
most have no idea ai can do any useful work. why should they? the interface we've provided remains a Google search bar but with AGI behind it.
employees at these companies have been very receptive when i've shown up for them, taken interest in their work (from cleaning supplies to food distribution), provided them tools to remove toil, and taught them how to use chat, claude, etc.
once someone sees the value, i then explain "this new tool you love, is made possible by these data centers. here's why..." many were data center skeptics before. multiple people have now told me they get it and thanked me for changing their mind.
you have to give people something to believe in. we haven't yet but it's not too late.
just go do some "ai deploys" in your hometown, i'm sure your perspective will change.
We’ve got exclusive new polling on local data center development at @heatmap_news.
Over the past year, we’ve asked Americans whether they would support or oppose a data center being built near where they live.
We haven’t changed the wording. When we first polled the question a year ago, Americans were split 43-42 on support/oppose.
When we asked again in Feb, a bare majority opposed data centers.
Today, 75% of Americans say they would oppose a data center being built near where they live, and 61% said they would “strongly oppose” such a proposal.
It’s a swift, massive shift in US public opinion on a scale that I wouldn’t have once thought possible. More details, including the party ID & rural/urban breakdown, in my new story: heatmap.news/daily/data-cent…
chatgpt got me an $866.36 refund and $100 flight credit
1. jetblue cancels flight last minute
2. tell chat to go get me a refund 2 weeks later
3. refund received plus flight credits
screenshots attached
how to here
schlep-simulator.jakeottiger…
i scraped 10,000 codex posts, mapped their locations, and made them all searchable
winning-posts-atlas.jakeotti…
in japan, a teacher made N64 style games for students
in portugal, a guy used Sol to dissect his muscles...
in china, a dad made a wechat app to share pics of his baby w/family
surreal to be featured in this beautiful video with three wishes cereal, @tomiyasu16, and @nasqret.
sol is a step change for knowledge work. it is approachable, reliable, and cost effective.
more on the how later today...
bill is a great person driven by an important mission.
he is the kind of person to give you the time of day before you have any "accolades" or "experience."
he did this for me in college before i'd done anything meaningful. i'm fortunate he is now a mentor.
listen to his story and if you are building in the space i could not imagine a better partner to your company.
given the ai hate rn, here's a story on how my dad used it as a tool for good during a very difficult time.
my grandpa passed away 3 months ago. he grew up in switzerland and had a number of old documents stored under his bed.
everything was written in german but none of our american family members read nor speak german.
my dad fed all the documents into chatgpt and asked it to translate the documents to english. he wanted to preserve the tone and to learn more about that period of time.
chat did this all.
while grieving, my dad was able to take a moment to himself to understand more about his father’s story.
before we would've used google translate and read poorly translated german articles that were almost nonsensical. we've tried to use google translate in the past to speak to our swiss relatives but it goes poorly bc of the very literal translations.
now, my dad was able to stay in the moment and immediately share the story with my grandma.
this fails for two reasons:
it’s out of touch and demeaning.
eric is 71, worth $43.3 billion, and has a 27 yo girlfriend. he’s addressing graduates my age that are experiencing a shift we have never seen before.
yet, he claims he can understand and feel what we do.
he can’t.
he then goes on to talk about not giving up agency before pivoting to say ai is inevitable and the only area you can shape.
this is giving up agency. ai is the only problem worth working on.
his conclusion puts ai at the center of the story. “ai agents are solving problems you could never do on your own. ai is solving protein folding.”
who the hell does that resonate with?
certainly, not a group of 22 year olds that are looking out into an ominous job market while also experiencing the emotional rollercoaster of graduation.
imagine if he had started like this:
“you’re entering a world that is changing faster than we’ve ever seen. you’re scared because many people in my exact position are telling you ai is going to take your jobs. you watch TikTok’s that tell you ai is using all of the water.
i cannot relate to you. it’d be silly to tell you i can fully understand your emotions and feelings. i graduated in <old ass date> (no shade Eric) and only experienced the first technology revolution. i try to stay in touch with students like yourselves and other young entrepreneurs. you give me hope.
i hope to share an alternative story about this crazy moment from what i’ve heard at schools like yours.
professors have directed ai to solve a 50 year old genomic protein folding problem that will help cure cancer, provide new antibiotics, and even aid in providing clean energy. students with ESL and insufficient tutoring are going deeper on subjects in realtime by telling ai what else they want to learn about.
i hope you exercise your talents, no matter the field, to solve similarly ambitious problems. together we will build towards a better future than the one my generation thrust upon you.”
as a fellow Gen Zer, with many friends at labs and many friends in the trades, i can tell you people do not want to hate this technology nor you.
we use it to write our essays, create memes of our friends, to build incredibly, ambitious projects in record time, and to connect with our families (more on this tmrw).
i hope we can inject a little hopium and come back down to earth. go reconnect with friends from college, your hometown, or the barista at your local coffee shop. nurture your relationships, ask about their fears regarding technology, and what they want to see more of.
i’m sure at the very least you’ll have an interesting conversation. you might even forget about the permanent underclass for just a moment. maybe that’s enough.
i may have a task for an adventurer.
you’d likely be a fit if:
- you could teach my Luddite grandma to use ChatGPT and for her to love you
- you yearn to go to north dakota
- you can tell a language model how to write code
- you’ve been described as “having rizz”
the best people i know have one thing in common: they don’t go to these events.
here’s how i met them.
1) i was chronically online while building shit at college. i dm’d brilliant guy working on a product i used. he responded.
2) got internship with guy and turned it into a full time job. grinded my ass off in Lake Tahoe for a year. no one knew me.
3) applied to thrive on a whim. told my story about startups and tahoe.
4) managed to be accepted to thrive fellowship. they gave me full time offer
5) thrive and nyc friends introduced me to tons of incredible people. these people introduced me to others and now things have snowballed
i grew up in cleveland, went to boston college, and then lived in lake tahoe, nevada.
none of those places have real tech scenes.
follow your own path, do right by others, relentlessly chase after your passions, and when opportunities present themselves — deliver.
networking as activity is mostly cope.
e.g. the conference circuit, the warm intros, the moving to sf discussions or whatever, oh & the “grabbing coffee” economy.. all of this is overwhelmingly negative selection esp with vc (lol). the ppl worth knowing are usually too busy doing the thing to be farmable, & the ppl available to be networked w/ are available cuz they have literally nothing better going on.
do the work, then publish it loudly enough that the right ppl can find you w/o you having to chase. one way broadcast > two way schmoozing. this is why x matters a ton now more than ever before.
