ben keenan

Consulting Creative Director, Copywriter, Thought Policeman, Advisor.

[ben keenan @warmcola]

@henrythe9ths Checking out this Ai guide, gets lots of positive reviews

[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)

[ben keenan @warmcola]

How to lo-fi with A.I. https://t.co/5yWbnfZHXZ via @YouTube

[💧simon holmes à court 🦋 @simonahac]

a simple explainer for the #voice — calmly dismantling 8 myths, without judgement.

https://t.co/UuaNaZzUWt

[ben keenan @warmcola]

Love a good joke. https://t.co/35Xm53EtMj

[ben keenan @warmcola]

@zacmartin I worked with someone who gave the wrong bank account details and wasn’t paid for for several months. And didn’t notice.

[ben keenan @warmcola]

https://t.co/5yg9IuBOvq

[ben keenan @warmcola]

@BrandDNA I still miss Connies, they were like the hosts of the tram.

[Zac Martin @zacmartin]

How bad ads get made. Trigger warning for anyone who works in advertising. https://t.co/ls2gPALPb5

[Ryan Egan @ryanegan]

@warmcola The good news is we’ll be able to defeat Omicron if we find the five soulstones of power and reunite them on planet Iridine before the next full moon.

[ben keenan @warmcola]

@ryanegan Strong.

[ben keenan @warmcola]

Let’s give the new variant a really uncatchy name. That’ll surely stop it taking off. #Omicron

[Stanley Johnson @BrandDNA]

"Inside we are ageless. When we talk to ourselves it's the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It's the body that's changing around that ageless centre." ~ David Lynch

[ben keenan @warmcola]

@daveking @angusnorthcote vaudeville clown duos for the win

[ben keenan @warmcola]

How creative are you? Take this divergent thinking test https://t.co/ekbLoJbwDp?

[ben keenan @warmcola]

@daveking @angusnorthcote It’s become my obsession. Slipstream & Laugh. This thing is basically a band name generator

[Ꮆ㇄ə𝓝𝓝 尸ə七ə尺丂 @nightwatchman]

I could listen to @warmcola talk about work and thinking all day.

Fab interview with @BernSchwerdt, well worth hearing no matter what stage you are in your copywriting career.

https://t.co/YXrf0RZenq

[ben keenan @warmcola]

The repressed nature of race walking appeals to me on so many levels, why run when you can walk.

[ben keenan @warmcola]

https://t.co/SHwT50zJwJ