Andy Zolper

InfoSec Practitioner. Technology Executive. Advocate for Continuous Learning. Student of Great Leadership. Marine. VMI Man. Opinions my own.

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@henrythe9ths AI Guide

[Henry Shi @henrythe9ths]

There's a shocking fact about AI that nobody tells you: You can catch up to the public AI research frontier in just 2 weeks. Yes, really.

I've built a $150M annual revenue startup over the last 8 years and If I were to start a company today, I’d drop everything and go all-in on AI.

But like many busy software builders, I felt lost—overwhelmed by the noisy, crowded and fast-moving modern AI landscape. And I wasn’t alone.

So I spent my entire holiday diving deep into AI research—reading 30+ papers, watching hours of lectures, analyzing trends, and catching up to the research frontier.

✨ Here’s what I learned:
- You don’t need months (or years) to catch up.
- You don’t need a PhD or decades of ML experience.
- You need fewer than 20 papers and 2 weeks to understand the major breakthroughs shaping AI today.

It's because the technology is extremely nascent and most techniques that came before are no longer relevant:
- ChatGPT is barely 2 years old and Transformers are only 7 years old.
- Most game-changing discoveries happened within the last 4 years, driven by a few breakthrough ideas, scaling laws, and efficient matrix multiplication.

The biggest secret?
Many groundbreaking AI papers with thousands of citations are surprisingly simple and applied, like adding "let's think step by step" to the prompt, or simply asking the LLM over and over again to improve its answer (Self-Refine).

I realized there are tons of founders and builders in the same boat—wanting to dive deeper into AI but unsure where to start.

I've created an essential AI Guide that helped me catch up, in just 2 weeks, to the frontier of public AI research to figure out where the next opportunities and gaps were:
- Curated list of only the most important papers
- Simple explanations of key concepts
- Clear pathway to understanding the frontier of modern AI

It’s perfect for:
- Founders expanding into AI
- Builders wanting to innovate at the frontier of AI
- Investors looking to separate the signal from the noise

👇 Want the full guide?
- Like and Share this post
- Comment "AI Guide"
- I'll send you the complete guide

(ps, I’m also teaming up with @VishalVasishth, co-founder of @obviousvc with @ev (focused on large-scale societal impact companies like Twitter, Medium, Beyond Meat), to host a small meetup to discuss what's working and needs to be solved in the AI stack in SF. Message me if you're interested)

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@thatkidbigmike Zanfel. Other remedies are just itch relief

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@DaleStarkA10 They are great pilots. But when doesn’t the Mishap Board come out with pilot error.

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@HackingDave Teenagers. Life’s longest night patrol. This is why you trained

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@graceclarke Don’t chase ‘happiness’ if that means avoiding life’s challenges and therefore missing the reward of fulfillment. Yes it’s ‘hard work’ (my family: 5 kids including triplets) but nothing else compares. And yes when they are adults Thanksgiving is just absolutely awesome

[Frontier Internet @FrontierCorp]

Experience blazing-fast upload and download speeds and get an eero router included.

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@ImposeCost @JeffBezos No doubt. In USMC it was “before the decision is made debate the merits vigorously. After the decision is made implement as if it was your idea.” @JeffBezos gets credit for brevity

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@ImposeCost “Disagree and Commit” @JeffBezos

[Tom Winter @Tom_Winter]

BREAKING | NBC News: In what has been described as a "major incident" the United States Marshals Service has suffered a ransomware attack and data exfiltration which includes law enforcement sensitive information about fugitives.

Reported w/ @anblanx Mike Kosnar & @jonathan4ny

[James Blake | Cyber Resilience @jimmyblake]

Cybersecurity budgets are going up. So why aren't breaches going down? <- I’ve experienced this first hand evaluating operational capabilities: there is no correlation (above a certain baseline) between capability and budget. Operationalisation is the key. https://t.co/BWj4Ug8c6n

[Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. @stavridisj]

The most well-deserved Time "Person of the Year" pick ever? Zelensky is the Winston Churchill of our times, standing with courage and nobility in the face of darkness and evil coming from Moscow. Slava Ukraini!

[President Biden Archived @POTUS46Archive]

On Saturday, at my direction, the United States successfully conducted an airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed the emir of al-Qa’ida: Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Justice has been delivered.

[Tom Shugart @tshugart3]

Don't want to sound alarmist, but IMO it's notable that at this time of US-China tension, 3 of China's largest/newest roll-on/roll-off civilian ferries appear to be off their normal routes and are in or have moved south toward the Taiwan Strait. All 3 are associated with the PLA.

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

Did Russian GRU blow up a Texas LNG pipeline on June 8? | Washington Examiner https://t.co/7A8XUTHm1r

[🇺🇸 Kyle Bass 🇹🇼 @Jkylebass]

“Fund management companies shall, in accordance with the provisions of the Articles of Association of the Communist Party of China,establish party organizations, carry out party activities, and provide necessary conditions for the activities of the party.” https://t.co/cCIdMfGjhL

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@keribla @rcallimachi @nytimes Great review Keri, congratulations and thank you for sharing your story. Added to the summer reading list

[Winnona 💾 @__winn]

There’s both a user security and US-China national security component here. The F35 ✈️ runs on Linux, and Huawei, a U.S. sanctioned entity, is contributing a *ton* of code to the kernel using a tool we don’t know anything about…

https://t.co/y47KD0WRZo

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

The sage speaks

[Tom Peters @tom_peters]

All you need to know: Women buy everything. Old people have all the money. Women better leaders. Beauty/grace/simplicity is design standard for block of code or ball gown. Every team should have music or theater major. Moral behavior unswerving standard. Kindness, always.

[Andy Zolper @andyzolper]

@axios SEAL not Seal @axios!