Dan Stummer

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

AI slop is the best talent assessment tool leaders have had in a decade. https://t.co/yPZXsHq9eF

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Lead Edge is probably most famous for this letter. Mitchell calls it the "Hierarchy of Bullshit".

It's his way of distilling what he learned from cold calling 10,000 companies.

[Luke Pierce @lukepierceops]

Anthropic and OpenAI are both building PE-backed consulting arms to deploy AI inside companies.

Let that sink in for a second.

The two companies building the most powerful AI on earth looked at the market and said "businesses can't figure out how to use this. We need to go in and do it for them."

They are literally telling you where the gap is.

Companies have access to the best AI models ever built. And most of them are still running on spreadsheets, disconnected tools, and manual processes because nobody showed them how to actually implement it.

That's the whole game right now. Not building better models (obviously) or shipping new features.

IMPLEMENTATION.

Getting AI inside real workflows.

Mapping the processes, building the systems, and making it stick.

I've been doing exactly this for 4 years and have worked with 80+ companies at this point.

It started with automation and naturally flowed into Ai.

And every single engagement starts the same way. Not with AI or automation but with a process map.

Because AI alone won't fix broken operations.

Companies now understand that. They have not yet seen true ROI from Ai.

You have to understand how the business actually runs before you touch a single tool.

Where does the data live? Where are the bottlenecks? What's manual that shouldn't be? What breaks when volume goes up?

That's the work, and that's what Anthropic and OpenAI just told the entire market is worth billions.

Every company is going AI-first over the next 3-5 years.

The demand for people who can actually make that happen is about to be unlike anything we've seen.

The labs told you where the gaps are.

Now go fill them.

[Tuki @TukiFromKL]

🚨 Do you understand what just happened?

New York wants to ban AI from answering questions about medicine, law, and engineering.

Let me translate that for you:

> The industries charging you $500/hour just lobbied to make sure you can't get the same answers for free.

> This was never about safety. It's about protecting the bill rate.

> Lawyers don't want you to know AI can draft a contract in 30 seconds.

> Doctors don't want you to know AI can read your bloodwork better than a resident.

> Engineers don't want you to know AI can review your blueprints overnight.

They're not banning AI to protect you. They're banning it to protect their invoices.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

Unfortunately, I completely agree with this - it is “reality.” Curious though where you see the origin of this situation. It feels to easy to blame “social media” - that feels more of an accelerant than a root cause. Feels like the origination is more aligned withthe western push to (an often misapplied”) “positive psychology” movement.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

For those playing at home, this is “the quiet part”:

“Finally, sponsors are good at figuring out what portions of their business will trade for more. They will often focus the management team on recurring revenue as an example. This can increase the multiple meaningfully.”

Turns out, the durability of the revenue really matters!

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

He’s on his head…he’s HELLEBUYCK

One of the single greatest performances you will ever see. On the biggest stage.

Hats off.

[Pat McAfee @PatMcAfeeShow]

Our goalie decided we weren’t gonna lose today.. One of the greatest American sport performances of all time

🗣🗣 THANK YOU FOR STANDING ON YOUR HEAD CONNOR HELLEBUYCK

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

@NoahEpstein_ @damianplayer This is a good reminder about adoption for sure.

That said, “value” (control, opportunities, etc.—however you personally define it) is not bound by a normal distribution. First-mover advantage in emerging tech remains a very strong predictor of long-term success.

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

[prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️ @mrexits]

Software engineers in 2030 be like

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

I love math

[Pankaj @the2ndfloorguy]

https://t.co/cV8xxvnR2z

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

@amytam01 Excellent piece.

Once you begin to (re)believe in the future that technology can unlock and realize there are no longer any personal limitations to participating in building it, your only option is to jump or resign yourself to always knowing you chose not to.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

Incredible. Hats off…

[malinvestment.jpeg @malinvested]

Of course that's your contention. You're a first-time SaaS bear. You just got finished listening to some podcast, Dario on Dwarkesh, probably. Now you think it’s the end of white collar work and seat-based pricing is screwed. You're gonna be convinced of that til tomorrow when you get to “Something Big is Happening”. Then you’ll install ClawdBot on a Mac Mini, vibe code a dashboard on top of a postgres database and say we’re all just a couple ralph loops away from building a Salesforce competitor. That’s gonna last until next week when you discover context graphs, and then you're gonna be talking about how the systems of record will be disintermediated by an agentic layer and reposting OAI marketing graphics.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because ultimately the application layer is just ….”

The application layer is just business logic on top a CRUD database. You got that from Satya’s appearance on the BG2 pod, December 2024, right? Yeah, I saw that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or...is that your thing? You get into the replies of anyone posting a SaaS ticker. You watch some podcast and then pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some VCs and embarrass some anon who’s long SaaS? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in a couple years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don't do that. And two: you dropped thirty grand on Mac Minis and LLM API calls to come to the same conclusion you could’ve got for free by following a handful of VC accounts.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

Yes, agree—formal board meetings often just ratify decisions made elsewhere.

This mirrors Japanese **nemawashi** (根回し): informal 1:1 chats (hallways, coffee, desk-side) to build consensus, address concerns privately, secure buy-in & avoid surprises in official mtgs.

Real influence = quiet “hallway meetings,” in Japan or elsewhere.

Longer process—yes.
More effective at winning—also yes!

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

Completely right. The struggle most have around “transformations” is that they fail to really internalize that it will get worst before it gets better. These programs are not linear in nature; so you have to have the “stomach” to understand the economics and nature of these in general. Otherwise you will find yourself bringing in a new set of consultants to help you with yet another roadmap!

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

@BigJohn043 @ThePECEO Completely agree on the “focus” commentary. But I would argue that it’s also imperative to have the incentive structure aligned to that “focus” as well. Both have to harmoniously pull in the same direction.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

As I was reading my @every newsletter this am, this innocuous line just blew my mind:

“…If you can stay inside ChatGPT and have agents do all the browsing for you—maybe even spin up custom pages on demand—do traditional websites cease to matter?”

Spin up custom pages…yes, it makes logical sense when you stop to think about it but whoa! Imagine consuming the web in a way unique to your preferences and learning/comprehension style.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

@paulswaney3 Ironically sometimes increased levels of intelligence creates its own barriers. The need to understand “how it all works” BEFORE you take any action is a killer. Progress > Perfection

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

@paulswaney3 I’d love to see your response to this! Great question.

[Dan Stummer @Dan_Stummer]

Some absolute gold right here…

[Paul W. Swaney III @paulswaney3]

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