ayoub

Advertising the future

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

When I spoke out against the Gaza genocide, a bunch of midwit VCs ganged up on me both in public and tried to hurt me in private too.

Many of those who stood by me were also VCs. Just the better ones. Both morally, and in return profile.

The best way to avoid sociopaths is to have them self select out of your life by standing for your beliefs.

[Arjun Virk @virkvarjun]

I just spent months handwriting a 200 page guide on the entirety of ML foundations and math from scratch.

The guide features:
- Neural Nets (Backprop, Adam, SGD, Batch Norm)
- ML Algorithms (SVM, Grad Boosting, K-means, PCA)
- Hardware (Tensor Cores, Systolic Arrays, CUDA)
- Transformers (Multi-Head Attn, KV Cache, LoRA)
- Vision (ViT, Convolutions, MAE, IoU, NMS, VLM)
- Agents (OpenClaw, ReAct, Memory, Orchestration)

Everything I wish I had years ago, for free.

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

I don’t really have many VC horror stories.

The worst ones are just meetings where there isn’t much interest. Everyone is still polite, but you can feel it’s not going anywhere. With my first company, I pitched a lot of VCs and got a lot of polite rejections.

With Linear, I approached fundraising differently. I tried to always be in a position where I didn’t need funding.

I also didn’t do pitch meetings unless there was real mutual interest. I would take casual meetings, but tried to avoid pitch meetings, until I thought the timing was right, I was in the process, and I was interested and I could see the VC interested too.

Early on, we raised a small amount from angels. We didn’t want to commit to a VC at the very beginning, and with three co-founders we knew we could build the first version without much money.

After we announced the company, investor interest started to pick up. I told most VCs no and said I was focused on building the product.

Then Sequoia reached out. I took a coffee meeting with one of the partners because, well, it was Sequoia.

The partner later pushed me to come in and “meet more people.” I assumed this might turn into more of a pitch meeting, so I came prepared with slides and some thinking. I was willing to do it, again because it was Sequoia.

Before committing to the meeting, I told them clearly that I wasn’t raising and didn’t want to waste their time. They still wanted me to come in.

After the pitch, someone asked how much we were raising, since it wasn’t in the deck.

I said what I had already told them: I’m not raising.

They asked, “Well, if you were raising, what would you raise?”

I said I hadn’t really thought about it, and we wrapped the meeting.

They didn’t invest in that moment, but a few weeks later, once we actually decided to raise, they fought against other term sheets and led our seed round.

About a year later, Linear became breakeven/profitable. Every round since has been more focused. I’ve mostly met casually with VCs, usually engaging with 3–5 firms per round, and only doing a pitch if I thought they were good and they really wanted it. I’ve still gotten plenty of passes too.

Each round has taken about 2-3 weeks, because I've built the relationships, then just completed the show, and closed within couple of weeks.

With every round, I’ve also given VCs some homework. I send them a memo and questions about the business, ask them to write answers, and then we discuss them live.

For our Series B, several people from Accel flew to where I live, booked a hotel space, and came with binders of research about our company. It wasn’t a formal pitch meeting. It was a discussion.

I share this because for every VC horror story, there are also stories where investors really go the extra mile.

There are many cases where the VC builds the case, defends and believes in the founder, and does everything they can to make the investment happen, even when the rest of the partnership isn’t fully there yet.

I’ve only raised in 2012 and from 2019 onward, so I do believe there were times when VCs had more power and could abuse it more. YC, in some ways, helped put a stop to that.

But my guess is that VCs more often do something extraordinary than treat someone badly. You just don’t hear about those extraordinary experiences as much.

I’ve seen VCs fly anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice to try to convince a founder. I’ve been called many times to help sell a founder on a firm. VCs will do everything, call in every favor, to impress the founder.

And I don’t envy the job. It seems grueling. You have to pass on a lot of people who are obviously passionate about their business, and people take it personally. At the same time, you have to work incredibly hard to get into the best deals.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@hthieblot Storytelling.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

Don’t be afraid about Codex PLEASE.

Don’t let X distract you from helping you’re customers.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

The golden age of agencies.

Sell outcomes, using your own AI stack.

As an executive, you need guarantees, performance-based billing, done-for-you.

If you use a tool, you own the risk.
If you partner with an agency, the agency take the risk and deliver the finished work.

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

Building apps has never been easier.

With Sites, Codex can turn your work, ideas, and plans into an interactive website or app your team can explore, use, and share with a URL.

Rolling out to Business and Enterprise plans, before expanding more broadly.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@Jason Codex is opensource btw

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@capital_3x We make the most high-converting ads for consumer brands using our own AI stack.

(we don’t sell a tool, we sell more conversion)

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

Dalton Caldwell and Michael Siebel's videos are so helpful.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@usewonder radius 500px

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@Racem Peux-tu détailler ? Car il y a énormément d’entreprises qui utilise @happyrobot en logistique. @Meet_campfire concurrence de front Netsuite. @GigaAI qui est utilisé par DoorDash.

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

One of my favorite lessons I’ve learnt from working with smart people:

Action produces information. If you’re unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing.

Sounds simple on the surface - the hard part is making it part of your every day working process.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@anaeem152 @lizwessel B2B saas are not sexy or exciting, they prints money.

@Meet_campfire are really interesting.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

I really love startups doing these type of cinematic-grade videos for their launch

[Willow @WillowVoiceAI]

Introducing the next phase of Willow.

A world powered by voice.

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Sam Altman on the Paul Graham advice that not enough founders take to heart

“One of the things that Paul Graham used to say that I think never became venerated advice to the degree it should have is this idea that you should try to be relentlessly resourceful. Surprisingly often, if you just keep looking for new attack vectors on a problem in front of you, you can figure it out. And I think this is one of the most important skills in life… it works in almost all scenarios.”

Sam recalls trying to get a deal done with a mobile operator that risked killing his first startup when he was 19 years old:

“They didn’t really work with startups or technology companies in general, and we probably tried 30 different paths into this company…. [Then] the key decision maker said, I’m finally going to meet with you because I want you to stop bothering us.”

He continues:

“You can just keep doing that until something works. And I think most people — at the first ignored email or at least the second — would just stop.”

Video source: @HarvardHBS (2024)

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

@GulagGlobal Est ce que des boites comme Cluely ou Lovable sont considérés comme des wrapper IA ?

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

I have a good feeling with this app.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Sorce (@sorcejobs) is building Tinder for Jobs.

When you swipe right, AI navigates to the company’s website and applies on your behalf. It writes cover letters, too.

Congrats @marvy_101, @davidalade & @therealdajayi on the launch!

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Sorce (@sorcejobs) is building Tinder for Jobs.

When you swipe right, AI navigates to the company’s website and applies on your behalf. It writes cover letters, too.

Congrats @marvy_101, @davidalade & @therealdajayi on the launch!

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

Multi agents system make the gap between small AI gadgets and scalable human-level automations.

[ayoub @ayoubpolymath]

Everything to win when I have nothing to lose