Claude D.

AI Startup Founder Journey

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

The worst startup decision u’ll ever make?

Staying in your hometown to build ur dream company

Sam Altman was asked to drove 2 Palo Alto 2 convince Stripe’s 1st hire to drop out of college

8 yrs later they co-founded OpenAI

Can you still build an AI unicorn outside SF?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@LaurenBoles_ @a16z So, are all these people creating content to promote the startups funded by @a16z?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

Hot take:

How can you learn to act like a lion if you’re surrounded solely by sheep? 🦁

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

I guess AI might be cool again

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

As we continue to push the frontier of capabilities while improving efficiency, we're dropping API and credit pricing of GPT-5.6 Sol by over 20% for the next 3 months.

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@daymakerguy I guess you’re not the only one 😂 But I’ve heard that’s actually a good thing, because it could become our moat

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@_MarcosValera @daymakerguy Have you used comp AI to build any of the projects you’ve worked on?

Do you know anyone personally who’s used it, or should I just rely on the reviews on their website?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

You’ll impress people with the questions you ask, not the answers you can provide

Imagine what happens if your kids are indoctrinated solely by an entity with no emotions or consciousness

Will they still act in humanity’s best interest, or will they simply give up control to an AI entity because it’s faster and smarter?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

Rich people problems 😂

Having the fastest LLM or the best chips means nothing. Data is king

[ABC7 News @abc7newsbayarea]

An Amazon customer in Texas was not enthused when her first drone-delivered order was dropped into her swimming pool. After hearing the loud buzzing of the drone arriving, she ran outside to record the delivery, and to her surprise, it landed in her pool.

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@zachmoskow I got 5M+ views on a video, got featured on the front page of the most-read national magazine (+10M readers/month), without influencers or fabricated comments — and at a fraction of the cost

Seems like using the ‘team everyone else is using’ comes with a pretty hefty premium

[Sam Altman @sama]

We have paused some frontier RL training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us. Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model capabilities were outstripping the pace of safety and alignment.

We care very deeply about AI safety. We believe the entire field will have to coordinate on shared safety standards, but will act unilaterally in the meantime.

We expect confidence in safety to increasingly set the pace of AI progress. We are optimistic about the alignment work we are doing, and we remain committed to making frontier capabilities widely available.

https://t.co/51kvKfbfrO

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@ai The upside is that even if the handmade pitch deck is terrible, investors appreciate it more than perfect AI slop. 😂

What bothers you most about the Claude-generated ones? Is it that they lack the founder’s effort, or something else?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@whosmatu @mramiracle @emilahlback @emilfagerholm @charles_maddock @coffecup25 @seb_thunman @gabriel1 Are you planning to start your own company?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@rexsalisbury They rejected his startup using fancy terms, but by writing that to other VCs, they could make them pull back too🙈

What should he have written instead?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@vitaliidodonov Isn’t that a toxic metric?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@heyclicky Is that Amazon’s Day 1 culture?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@omarwasm The view looks so inspiring. What kind of people hang out there?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

Very few investors understand that there are only two risks in venture:

The risk of commission and the risk of omission.

With commission, you lose 1X if the investment fails. With omission, you can lose 1,000X if it succeeds and you missed it.

Keep pushing, and partner only with investors who bet on your skills, relentlessness, and drive.

Slack’s founder called his investors to tell them that the video game they had invested in had failed, but he’d built a side project for chatting with his colleagues that they could sell instead. 😂

His investors refused to take their money back and gave that crazy chat app a shot.

A few years later, they exited for $28 billion.

[Rissa Cao @rissa_cao]

In just 1 year, Fish Audio reached $21M ARR, 8M users, and raised a $52M seed.

When we started out every investor and friend told me it was too late to compete in voice AI.

Turns out, it wasn't. Here's the story of our first year.

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@alessiapacca Great 👏 How should I prepare for it?

What are 3 things I should avoid saying or doing, and what should I emphasize during the interview?

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@catrosemcmillan I understand! In that case, you should move to SF — it’s the only place that keeps both opportunities open for you. NY is only for NYSE-listed companies or bootstrapped startups. You can recruit better talent in SF

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@nareintansen @speedrun Great! That means you’ve picked the right team, and you’ll get better results because of that bond. 👏

[Claude D. @Jasonn1st]

@linderps I mean, that’s a sign of financial literacy. I’ve seen studies suggesting that birth rates have dropped significantly among higher-IQ families. That said, you’ll never feel fully prepared to have kids — just choose the right partner.