Daniel Friedman

Thiel Fellow working on @Thinkful. Previously @RRE and @ElmCityLabs

[Dan Shipper 📧 @danshipper]

Sam Gerstenzang (@gerstenzang) and Dan Friedman (@dnfriedman) run what they call the "world's slowest startup incubator."

Their model: Come up with a business idea, grind it to several million dollars in revenue themselves, then hand it off to a CEO to take it to the next level. They do this in industries Silicon Valley ignores.

Their first company, Moxie, helps nurses open their own medical spas. It's now a Series C company with 600+ customers and a 200-person team. Their second is a funeral home with zero physical real estate that's become the largest provider of funeral services in California.

Both launched right as ChatGPT dropped—and neither was built with AI in mind. So how do they think about AI inside businesses where the core work isn't changing? That's what I wanted to dig into on @every's AI & I. We covered a lot:
- How they built an AI agent called "Matthew Bolton" to run their customer discovery process
- Why AI synthetic customer calls failed
- The stark gap between AI speed gains on greenfield projects vs. mature codebases
- Their rule: You don't get credit for using AI, but you're expected to deliver the best work possible knowing it exists
- Why they'd rather compete against unsexy industries than fight 10 @ycombinator companies in an AI-native category

This is a great watch for anyone building a real-world business and trying to figure out where AI actually helps vs. where it's just hype.

Watch below!

Timestamps
Introduction and how Sam and Dan's paths first crossed: 00:00:00
What it means to be "the world's slowest incubator": 00:01:40
Why Bolton and Watt runs companies to several million in revenue before handing off to a CEO: 00:04:50
How specialization across the founding journey creates advantages: 00:07:30
Building AI-durable businesses versus AI-native ones: 00:10:40
How an AI agent transformed their customer discovery process: 00:16:10
Where synthetic customer calls completely fail: 00:19:30
Deploying AI inside established companies: 00:29:30
Why newer projects see huge gains from AI while mature companies see 10 percent: 00:32:30
A preview of what's next for Bolton and Watt: 00:37:00

[Peter Clowes @peterclowes]

Why I left @twitter or rather why I did not sign up for “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0

🧵

[Nathan Baschez @nbaschez]

Do you feel this? Are you adhd?

(Poll in next tweet)

[Thinkful @thinkful]

Until now, students had no way to gauge the long-term outcomes of #bootcamps like us. So we conducted the first survey ever to measure ongoing results. We reached out to 334 students over a year after they graduated - here’s what we found: https://t.co/9Dhy4NHr1I

[Saul @definitely]

Bien merecida enhorabuena to the joyful "dada" in the picture and to the rest of the @thinkful team. Yet another incredible milestone achieved while keeping the student first. No easy feat. Onward!

[Grae Drake @Grae_Drake]

Huge news six years in the making. It's been amazing and wouldn't trade my time with the students and colleagues I've met through Thinkful for anything. Looking forward to the next chapter.

https://t.co/5rVDIdWCAf

[Darrell Silver @darrellsilver]

Pre-dawn at Chegg... just the beginning with @DNFriedman and the whole @thinkful community. https://t.co/zdqQWZxgHt

[Thinkful @thinkful]

We sat down with @BoozAllen's Principal Data Scientist, Dr. Kirk Borne, to discuss the emergence of big data and how data science can help everyone from Fortune 500 companies to NASA. https://t.co/2FFiDR5vYv #datascience

[Daniel Friedman @DNFriedman]

Very excited to share this news: “Thinkful Acquires Bloc” by @darrellsilver https://t.co/6g7kczNXGn

[RobinOlsen 🟧 @RobinHervig]

Exciting news @Thinkful Announces $10 Million Fundraise in Partnership with Leif Technologies, Inc. | Business Wire https://t.co/0VQCJzRaaz

[Kirk Borne @KirkDBorne]

Great to hear @darrellsilver of @thinkful https://t.co/EgEpSNKubi discussing disruptive education at today’s #FTsummit @FTSummitG — #Edtech is part of the #FutureOfTechnology and confluent with #DigitalDisruption — #AI #DataScience everywhere

[Thinkful @thinkful]

Amazon’s #hq2 shortlist contains not 1, not 2, but 3 proposals from the D.C. metro area, the top choice in our analysis. https://t.co/xtxCgM2bYW #datascienceiscool #obviouslydc #AmazonHQ2

[Daniel Friedman @DNFriedman]

“Announcing Thinkful’s $9.6m Series A” by @darrellsilver https://t.co/tqAPBp4efJ

[Thinkful @thinkful]

We are excited to announce that we have acquired @vikingeducation and @TheOdinProject. With this new partnership, we will continue our mission to provide accessible coding education and resources to aspiring developers. #thinkfulat5 https://t.co/vMnLho4f65

[Mayor Muriel Bowser @MayorBowser]

Data science says the best choice for @amazon next HQ2 is #ObviouslyDC! Here's the analysis to prove it 🔗https://t.co/5BEydSJETc @DMPEDDC

[Daniel Friedman @DNFriedman]

@asbergman Not wrong but couldn't innovate given structure. @darrellsilver shared thoughts on downsides of early corp ownership https://t.co/si0DXstokI

[Thinkful @thinkful]

We're thrilled to be a founding member of CIRR, moving transparency forward among coding bootcamps. https://t.co/Aazv4Kcv9M