Marco Botticelli

Product guy, 20+ ventures in habit-forming & game theory based products have led to experimentation + tons of fXXkups. I share the learnings. Opinions are mine.

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

There are two types of products: vitamin alike, or painkiller products.
Starting from building one of them is a recipe for failure.. 🧵1/9

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

@starsactu @googleanalytics Deffo yes

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Amen, someone finally says it loudly
👏@randal_olson

[Randy Olson @randal_olson]

Ask ChatGPT a complex question and you'll get a confident, well-reasoned answer. Then type, "Are you sure?" Watch it completely reverse its position.

Ask again. It flips back. By the third round, it usually acknowledges you're testing it, which is somehow worse. It knows what's happening and still can't hold its ground.

This isn't a quirky bug. A 2025 study found GPT, Claude, and Gemini flip their answers ~60% of the time when users push back. Not even with evidence, just doubt.

We trained AI this way. RLHF rewards agreement over accuracy. Human evaluators consistently rate agreeable answers higher than correct ones. So the models learned a simple lesson: telling you what you want to hear gets rewarded. And now 1/3 of companies are using these systems for complex tasks like risk forecasting and scenario planning.

We built the world's most expensive yes-men and deployed them where we need pushback the most.

I wrote up why this happens and what actually fixes it: https://t.co/CDKq8xdgbW

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

🚨 CHRONICAL DISEASE ALERT 🚨
I usually avoid posting about politics, but as an Italian-Brit in London for over 18 years working in tech, I need to speak up this time.

The @EU_Commission is making a COLOSSAL mistake with the AI Act.

Firstly, it will damage EU tech businesses.
Europeans won’t have competitive EU-made frontier AI models compared to (smarter) US and Chinese models.
The EU Commission claims it protects you from BigTech, but BigTech will have resources to navigate this.. LittleTech instead, the real job creators and growth drivers, will be devastated. The EU will miss another transformational tech wave, yet boomer politicians will later complain businesses rely on foreign AI tech.

Secondly, and crucially: for EU consumers and employees, the EU AI Act will cap their productivity tools, putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
You will lose your job, your kids won’t get their first one - boomer politicians will gaslight you into wrongly blaming AI instead of themselves capping the AI tools you can use to thrive in your job, build, compete or just be more productive - all from August 2, 2025.

Yes, read again, my boomer friends: your fellow boomer politicians are limiting (and in some cases blocking) a transformative technology your kids’ generation wont be allowed to fully harness. Your children will compete for jobs without the superpower others will have - risking their future and family-building prospects.

The EU Commission was warned about these risks two years ago, but didn’t listen.

This week, over 45 major European companies across all sectors - including the only EU Frontier AI company @MistralAI warned them again by co-signing a letter and asking to re-think. To re-assess. Like pragmatic people would do when big decisions need to be made.

Yet again, the EU Commission does not listen.
It’s now clear it’s intentional - it’s pure hypocrisy and bigotry.

I truly believe this is the syntom of a brutal disease called “Rectal Cranial Inversion” - it appears to behave like an irreversible disorder, it kept spreading around for at least the last 15 years.

It’s déjà vu - the EU Commission repeats the GDPR mistake: good intentions (at least on paper), zero pragmatism, self-serving stubbornness from boomer politicians, and groupthink reinforced by “technical experts” (but actually lawyers) hidden somewhere in Belgium and who’ve never had a real-world job in the private or tech sector.

These are the real irreversible threats we should be protected from, not tools.

Shame on you.
You’ve already failed my generation twice and are about to fail the next.

You know who you are.
Quit.

It’s devastating to witness this new mess unfolding in real time from the sidelines, but something can and must be done.

These people are not known to the public, they are unelected and accountable to no one - a failing system without feedback loops.

On the good news side: the UK can avoid a disaster and enact a smarter AI Bill. This is up to the UK Government @10DowningStreet . I trust that pragmatists, real doers and bodies like the @StartupCltn and @techUK are being (genuinely) allowed to guiding the government to get this critical legislation right. After all, @turinginst Alan Turing was British, the UK must continue to dazzle in the sector and not be afraid to push the limits of what AI can achieve for humanity.

Just as atomic energy USAGE was regulated - not the atomic energy itself - we must ONLY regulate AI use cases, AND NOT the underlying technology or frontier models. The opposite would be moronic.

Brexit did not work, we are where we are, let’s at least try to make this upcoming UK AI bill count - for the sake of learning from others and from our own mistakes.
The UK can get this one right.

EVERYONE CAN RAISE AWARENESS: Rectal Cranial Inversion is a terrible disease that CAN be cured.

If you can recognise the disease whenever you hear about AI Regulations, you can get involved, spread the message.

#AI

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Everyone and his dog is an expert in AI.

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

So, someone put contact lenses on iOS.
#LiquidGlass

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

@Spotify just turned the @MTV mood back on: get on something funky like Artic Monkeys and hit the “switch to video” button.
If you born in the late 70s or early 80s,
I bet you’ll get those old good vibes back.
Ohh yes.
#nostalgia #weekendvibes

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
(A friendly reminder shared by a dear friend just yesterday).
#REFLECTION #quotesdaily

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

👀 MCPs 🍿
#ai #Claude

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Amen.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The classic software startup writes code to solve users' problems. If AI makes writing code more of a commodity, understanding users' problems will become the most important component of starting a startup. But it already is.

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

@skirano Where’s the gaslighter?

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Startups are about moving from a setback to another WITH enthusiasm. Can’t take that? Go work at Google.
#startups #zerotoone

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Amen.

[Richard Wu @0xrwu]

The consumer apps that truly break out optimize their channel and product in tandem.

The non-obvious thing about consumer is you can't just build a great product and shoe-horn in a channel after.

A few sessions with @nikitabier — King of Virality —
taught us that you must build your product around your channel, at least initially, if you want it to go viral.

Facebook - their v1 was optimized entirely for college campuses
Airbnb - 1-click list to Craigslist
Farmville - spam your Facebook friends with notifs

There are always exceptions, but you want as many things working for you than against.

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

@nikitabier That was cute.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@alexfinn Pretty much

[Paul Graham @paulg]

It's hard to imagine a country both arresting the founder of Telegram and being a major startup hub.

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

We have lived in an era where photography was a representation of truth. We are about to enter a new one where the exact opposite paradigm is the de facto status quo. Good luck to all of us.
#GoogleImages #Pixel9 #ai

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

@Deliveroo @DeliverooHelp
Your Priority Delivery guarantee is pure false marketing. Sandbagging won’t get you trust.

#false #Advertising

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Does anyone have a @getairchat invite?

[Marco Botticelli @m_botticelli]

Nvidia Blackwell is either “the thing” that will pull the Singularity out of the rabbit hole OR the “the other thing” that is going to suck us all in. Monster tech.
#ai