Greg Kostello

CTO The future will be weird, awesome, amazing and just a bit scary. I tweet about issues with impact.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@Scobleizer @karpathy This is hugely valuable - one place to go to understand what's happening - 3 times a day is excellent. Thank you for providing this resource!

[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.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@krassenstein Mamdani not only wants to force everyone to use Arabic numerals, but also Perso-Islamic algebra, Chinese-invented paper, and the Indian zero. Truly an attack on traditional American values.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@MartinGTobias Crazy how accurate this is, as we are just started our fundraising journey. We came up with a similar list and have had good response. I love how it explained exactly why our startup was a good fit from an investment thesis. Thank you!

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@svpino Code with agents *definitely* beats drag and drop every time. I think visualizing flows helps us understand when hallucinations happen or breakdowns but the iteration happens through conversation not drag and drop or filling in some component via a modal dialog.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@svpino Why in the world would anyone be against tests or eval? I use TDD in agentic dev as my SOP. It's so much better than thinking of a "brilliant prompt" or just iterating. Focused tests are ideal of LLMs because of the limited context needed. PyTest or die.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@favilar @AnthropicAI Time to... check X, yep same issue. Read email, do standup, do some planning in ChatGPT/Gemini ;)

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@HarryStebbings As an AI startup founder, I regularly work 6-7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, but I also take breaks to exercise, walk the dog, meet w/ customers, investors, read research, go to conferences, etc. AI innovation is relentless. You either find that exciting or exhausting.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@simonw Complete win for Anthropic. I was around for the online music wars, which destroyed many of the early music startups. Apple ended up getting a sweet licensing deal from the labels and music publishing houses and that made the iPod and then the iPhone.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@svpino Depends if they got in through the front door (standard interview process) or side door (through acquisition as an early employee from a startup). The latter are gold, especially if the grinded through the lean days.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@HarryStebbings @skaragiannis Using AI effectively is a new skill. It requires practice and team sharing to master. There are huge advantages and a number of drawbacks you need to work through. Our team has 10x more productive but only after following strict “best practices” guidelines with SME oversight.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@Codie_Sanchez Thanks @Codie_Sanchez - very valuable in a very condensed but understable way. I particularly like the SOP approach mentioned below. And with smaller teams in the Age of Agents, it's much easier to manage and follow SOPs with the agents doing at least some of the work.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@DestinyCeedot @GrandSir1963 @svpino Don’t just accept an answer, have it explain its approach. The AI has infinite patience and no judgment so you can ask it any question. This approach is super helpful when you want to learn anything but particularly good when you are new to a subject.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@DestinyCeedot @GrandSir1963 @svpino I’m a huge fan of ai dev. I’ve been coding for decades and it’s the biggest advance in my lifetime. But, it can be used or abused. I review all the code the agents build. With my experience I can quickly course correct the errors. Since you’re new, have the AI teach you. 😀

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@DestinyCeedot @GrandSir1963 @svpino It can take 1 to 5 minutes to come back with a solution but that’s because in “thinking” mode it is going to try multiple paths to deliver a final answer. The time you save in getting a high quality solution is huge. The better you plan, the better the payoff

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@GrandSir1963 @svpino Yes, this is definitely true. One way to overcome this challenge, is to break your code into microservices and focus the agent on a subsection of your code. I've been using Claude Code and it delivers far superior results, but it's slow. Planning is the key - with specific steps.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@svpino As a person who worked with life science companies, no truer words have ever been written. All my clients were brilliant (just not experts in data science or LLMs).

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@_avichawla I've seen HyDE used effectively especially when the user is an SME (subject matter expert) but using short-hand and relying on context. The disadvantage is speed (but RAG can be slow as well). It's a tradeoff between completeness and accuracy vs. speed.

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

@travisakers Yes

[Greg Kostello @kostello]

I loved your video! I used to make videos when I was a kid as well, so I can completely relate to your experience and would hand-splice in my special effects. The combination of AI and human creativity is truly exciting. I'm glad you found a way not to hate it. It humans + AI not humans - AI.