David

created made AI agents to win elections in South Africa ($200k rev). 23. engineering, UCT

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Mark Zuckerberg: People undervalue option value when starting a company

“I never really understood the psychology of deciding that you want to start a company before you understand what you want to do… When you take on a new project - especially if you hire people or start a company - you’re doing that project… You immediately now need to convince someone else if you want to change your mind on something, and I think people really undervalue the option value and flexibility.”

Mark advises future founders:

“Explore what you want to do before committing… Keep yourself flexible… I think you have to be wary about starting a company too rigidly because you’re going to change what you want to do.”

Source: @ycombinator (Oct 2013)

[Ben Zhang @un1c0rnioz]

Lost my phone at the office and spent 30 minutes turning the place over. Find My was disabled by MDM.

Out of ideas, I asked Claude how I could find it. It suggested tracking the Bluetooth signal strength, then wrote me a meter in about a minute.

I walked around watching the number climb. Found it.

Apparently you can just make the tool you need now.

Code: https://t.co/fmnISzHfZ2

[MTS @MTSlive]

SITUATION DETECTED: Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google Deepmind. Jeff Dean is leaving to start his own company. Per Axios.

[Will Quist @wquist]

No one is gonna adopt agents. They will use products that get shit done. It’s seems the same but isn’t.

[Josh Miller @joshm]

Hot take… isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents? I don’t mean software engineers or AI early adopters. I mean “college friends talking about it in group chat,” the feeling you got when everyone started using Instagram or TikTok.

These frontier AI models are *insane* (as are the harnesses & tool calls & the like). And every large tech co has an AI agents platform, not to mention all the YC startups doing vertical agents. Yet all of your friends and family outside of tech — who spend all day staring at their iPhones and get paid to work in browser tabs — don’t really care or find themselves using any AI agents yet.

Yes ChatGPT, Claude, etc. are extremely popular… but if you look at the engagement data the vast majority of people are still using these aI chat tools like a glorified Google + Grammarly. That’s why the AGI labs are all pushing desktop apps for Codex, Cowork, etc. so hard to non-technical ppl. And yes exceptions for lawyers and customer service but even those have some asterisks and exceptions to rule.

Look I’m not saying the ChatGPT moment for AI Agents is not coming… it most definitely is! Remember we pivoted from Arc to Dia precisely because we believe computing is going to be radically reimagined around these AI primitives. No doubt. But that’s my point: it’s just so surprising it hasn’t happened yet because all of the tech you’d need is there.

Again if you stop for a second and think about it… for all the press and money and hype and models and crazy ARR numbers… this “AI Agent” moment does not *feel* like the other breakthrough tech moments we’ve lived through (e.g. think the shift to Stories via Snapchat & Instagram, or shift to on-demand via Uber/Airbnb/Doordash).

Which is a long way of saying: if you can figure out the answer to “why” most people don’t care about AI agents yet (and have no enduring interest in using them) — especially since the models and harnesses are here and ready — the answer to that question will allow you to capture a lot of marketshare and make a lot of money in 2027.

Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI Agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives… but alas the general public dgaf… that’s the generational puzzle to solve for the next 12 months for anyone not working on the models themselves.

[100 @yh_me2]

they’re making a day when things can be better and they’re calling it tomorrow

[Jared Palmer @jaredpalmer]

Cloud coding agents are inevitable

[Sam Altman @sama]

i would rather be an optimist and work hard than a pessimist posting about why things won't work.

it's much more difficult and the most likely path is failure, but society fails if people don't try.

no amount of "it will never work" essays will drive society forward.

[David @davidkariuki24]

Our imagination is often constrained by the limitations of our environment…

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The danger of selling to big companies, if you're a startup, is that they don't say no outright. They have months of meetings with you first. Since you hate meetings, that seems to you a sign of commitment. But it's not. They love having meetings! It's almost all they do.

[Leander @leanderriefel]

Codex is so good for studying for exams. I can give it a 900 slide file and it summarizes it into a ~40 page rendered markdown pdf. It can create mock exams, explain specific details and reiterate on my questions, see where I struggle, create time plans, etc. etc.

[Eric Glyman @eglyman]

"There is no possible protection from technology except by technology."

Don’t get too comfortable with what got you here.
Build what comes next.

See you on the field.

[Ben Lang @benln]

Cafe Cursor takeovers coming to 24 countries in August

🇨🇦🇮🇩🇦🇷🇹🇭🇲🇦🇮🇳🇺🇸🇿🇲🇰🇪🇿🇦🇦🇴🇪🇨🇧🇷🇻🇳🇪🇹🇸🇻🇨🇷🇨🇱🇷🇼🇵🇱🇦🇹🇬🇹🇵🇦🇨🇭

[David @davidkariuki24]

@grx_xce @Intelligence_ai @IndexVentures @conviction @A_StarVC Exceptional wow

[Grace Li @grx_xce]

Today, we're introducing @Intelligence_ai.

In 6 months, as a team of 10, we scaled from $5M to $60M ARR and 5.5M users across 190+ countries.

We raised a $7.9M seed, led by @IndexVentures with participation from @conviction, @A_StarVC, and @combinator to build DesignArena, a universal interface for accessing and evaluating the world's AI capabilities.

Most evaluations try to simulate the real-world. We believe the real-world is the ultimate verifier.

People come to @DesignArena with a request. Models compete to fulfill the request, and users determine what works best for them.

Their live user behavior evaluates the models, improves how work is routed, and helps people access the right intelligence.

We've helped the world's leading frontier labs break the news on their SOTA capabilities.

What's the limit? Join us and find out.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Most successful startups consist of a wonderfully popular product more than compensating for many mistakes by the founders. You have to have that wonderfully popular product or there is too little margin for error. But if you do, it will buy your way out of all kinds of trouble.

[David @davidkariuki24]

@EthanLipnik BRO!!! Like the user does not need to know how our backend works 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[Ethan Lipnik @EthanLipnik]

I think the most annoying part of GPT frontend that’s still not fixed is that it explains EVERYTHING in the UI

[Kai Brokering @kai_brokering]

These results are gonna look completely different in a year

[David @davidkariuki24]

The models suck at iOS UX