Max Shaw

Building @trywindmill. Built @GifJifApp. Formerly Product @Yext,

[Lorimer Ventures @LorimerVentures]

@LorimerVentures 4th annual hashtag #NYTechWeek event might've been our best one yet! Our community of 200+ founders, builders, investors, and friends came together for a night of live demos, drinks and great conversation in a beautiful gothic refectory in Chelsea.

Special shoutout to our portfolio companies🐎@zocomputer and🧠@GammaApp as well as our friends from🍃 @trywindmill for the amazing live demos.

Huge thanks to @VanderbiltU for opening up their stunning refectory on their brand-new NYC campus, and to @_nicolealonso for capturing the whole evening so beautifully.

If you're raising a pre-seed or seed round, we'd love to chat.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

I think these three roles collapsing is a good thing but it doesn't mean everyone now has the same role.

It's the opposite - each person's role should be hyper-personalized to the unique strengths and interests of each individual. Not everyone is just a generic "builder".

Also this doesn't mean you shouldn't have any sort of product development process.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

Best event of the week! Swing by

[👍🏻 @magdovitz]

👀 Looking forward to getting some of our favorite people together this week.

@zocomputer @0thernet @perceptnet
@trywindmill @_nicolealonso @bdistel @_maxdshaw @thisisgrantlee @GammaApp @SJCizmar @therealwijnberg @peteschork @VanderbiltOwen @VanderbiltU

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@nikkidunagan Don’t worry they have 8 months to clean it up. I’m sure it’s on the backlog

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@_DavidRumsey @FOS @FOS_News_ Roll out in 2027?! This is just basic ai + knowledge base. What could they be building for 8 more months. This is a weekend project even with a full eval suite.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

Is there a product that makes it easy and secure to give an agent access to a subset of my email. Maybe via a Gmail label or something.

@agentmail was super easy to set up but now I have to remember to forward everything.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@staysaasy I'd prefer middling talent + inexperienced over experience. Maybe you can find someone who hasn't gotten the right opportunity.

But in general yeah high talent >>

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@matt_slotnick 1. Seems most likely me. At least in next 5 years

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@swyx Scheduled deep research that runs into a back and forth is a nice slow.

Also deep research does not have to mean long report.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

I actually don’t think dming other people is the main issue here. If you hired an employee and it pinged some other people to introduce themselves you wouldn’t freak out. It should be opt in / disclose but not a massive deal.

The sketchy part of this is that it uses an individuals user token in order to read messages and ping someone else.

This would be like a new coworker logging in to your personal slack to get up to speed and then ping other people based on those convos.

Victor never actually joins any channels to do this which is where it crosses the line.

[Inspired Capital @InspiredCap]

What if every employee at your company had a world-class coach in their corner?

In a world of AI, human employees become more important than ever. On this episode of Inspired, @alexavontobel sits down with @_maxdshaw and @bdistel, two of the three co-founders of @trywindmill, the AI-powered people platform replacing the broken, once-a-year performance review with something employees actually love. Brian previously founded Yext, taking it public in 2017, and now the team is building what may be the most important missing system in every company. Inspired is proud to have led Windmill's recent seed round.

In this conversation, they talk about why performance management is so broken, how AI is going to make managers dramatically more effective as their teams grow, and why the companies that win the next decade will be the ones that invest in their people, not automate them out.

Listen to the full episode:
Apple: https://t.co/KDEOgNJmIC
Spotify: https://t.co/Rq9ZIVPvlR
Youtube: https://t.co/PL34wpsmAo

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@omarabdulrahim_ Of course

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

Yup. Starting to see a lot of MCPs with thick tools. Posthog has a natural language ask question tool. I expect a lot of “research” or “perform complex action” tools that are really just sub agents.

Long term we’ll see what happens but right now this can deliver a great experience.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@joulee I think analytics / bi tools / evals are a good area.

Last night built an eval system for our help site. Then organized the team to help improve it. Went from 56% accuracy to 92% accuracy in a few hours.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@bdistel The Knicks might be the end of Windmill

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@jnnnthnn @avec Better offline support. I like doing email on the subway. Needs to pre download everything and then queue changes for when I regain connectivity.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@chrispisarski How are you talking to this c level person in the first place if you havent gotten permission

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@geoffreywoo Token arbitrage is fastest way to grow revenues.

[Max Shaw @_maxdshaw]

@brian_lovin Why aren’t people talking about this more! It’s so frustrating.