John Cox

Co-founder @ 7pico, software product strategist, native Texan, swimmer, yard games enthusiast, easily amused

[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)

[John Cox @epjohn]

@henrythe9ths @robertgatx AI guide!

[John Cox @epjohn]

Made the plunge. Pool no longer cold enough during the Austin winter. Significantly colder needless to say.

[John Cox @epjohn]

@VH_Cannon

[John Cox @epjohn]

@michaelschwab13 Are we tipping??

[John Cox @epjohn]

Most annoying page in youth sports

[John Cox @epjohn]

Working remote this morning

[John Cox @epjohn]

Some of my thinking behind ditching our renaming effort plus the story behind the name of our company.

[SevenPico @SevenPicoInc]

We made a misstep with a renaming effort recently but it turned out to be a good thing as we rekindled our love for our name. Here’s the story behind it… https://t.co/V38ZAnT64l

[John Cox @epjohn]

The Christmas Chronicles 2. Also a fun holiday movie. Not sure how you can trust Belsnickel moving forward though.

[John Cox @epjohn]

Day 3: The Christmas Chronicles with Kurt Russell. Fun story, will have to finish tonight.

[John Cox @epjohn]

Holiday movie season, night 2: Home Alone. John Candy has the best lines, but the tarantula was the family favorite.

[John Cox @epjohn]

@davidgust Will do!

[John Cox @epjohn]

Started the holiday movie season off with Scrooged last night. Bill Murray at his best.

[AustinChamber @AustinChamber]

Congrats to Chamber member @DrinkBriggo for making it on @FastCompany's list of World's Most Innovative Companies for 2019!
https://t.co/Geyb0PSNYQ

[George Milton @geemilton]

Travel hack: order your coffee on your phone as soon as your plane touches down. Only in Austin. Thanks for a perfect cappuccino @DrinkBriggo!

(Also, please hurry up and put these everywhere)

[drawMD @drawmdapp]

Check out this prostatectomy presentation created with drawMD, free for everyone! Educate your patients like pro! iOS: https://t.co/deKjBulryo and Android: https://t.co/qVNJMv26ht

[MLB @MLB]

Say happy birthday to Carlton Fisk by entering for a chance to win this @Topps Signature Series card.

All you have to do is hit the RT button. #MLBCards

[David E. Albert, M.D @DrDave01]

Silicon Valley's Dumbest 'Inventions' of 2017 - hilarious! https://t.co/JuShcDsv6e via @gizmodo