In AI most people are still trying to use old maps on a new territory.
Throw the maps away. It's time to draw new ones. The only way you can do it is walking the land.
everyone's sleeping on how absurdly good 2026 is to start a company (even compared to 2024)
one person can now:
- ship full apps without engineers (cursor, replit)
- design without being a designer (v0, Claude Design)
- turn one video into 10 clips (opus, descript)
- push those clips to millions (X, Linkedin, TikTok)
- replace a support team (chatbase, intercom)
- literally watch exactly what their users do (Posthog)
- find + target perfect leads on autopilot (origami)
This is such a rare window. I just can’t imagine it being this easy ever again
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.
12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.
I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.
You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.
It's a dance.
And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.
If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.
No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.
It is weird.
Sometimes you don’t raise money and your startup dies
Sometimes you raise too much money and your startup dies
It’s just one more way to die. There are 1001 ways.
It’s not the most important question.
The most important question is: did you make something people want?
The gap between what AI can do vs what we're building with it is MASSIVE right now. That gap is your opportunity to build.
This might be the best time ever to start an AI company.
.@TaxFoundation, a nonpartisan tax research group estimates that Trump's 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on China will:
-Increase taxes by $1.2T (2025-2034)
-Reduce GDP by 0.4%
-Reduce employment by 344k jobs
-Result in an average tax increase of $830 per US household (2025)
Stop these reckless trade wars now!
You just have to ask "What counts as progress for this company?" and then do that. There is always some answer. And experienced investors (which are the ones you want anyway) know that this is as much as they can expect.