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Sam Gerstenzang (@gerstenzang) and Dan Friedman (@dnfriedman) run what they call the "world's slowest startup incubator."
Their model: Come up with a business idea, grind it to several million dollars in revenue themselves, then hand it off to a CEO to take it to the next level. They do this in industries Silicon Valley ignores.
Their first company, Moxie, helps nurses open their own medical spas. It's now a Series C company with 600+ customers and a 200-person team. Their second is a funeral home with zero physical real estate that's become the largest provider of funeral services in California.
Both launched right as ChatGPT dropped—and neither was built with AI in mind. So how do they think about AI inside businesses where the core work isn't changing? That's what I wanted to dig into on @every's AI & I. We covered a lot:
- How they built an AI agent called "Matthew Bolton" to run their customer discovery process
- Why AI synthetic customer calls failed
- The stark gap between AI speed gains on greenfield projects vs. mature codebases
- Their rule: You don't get credit for using AI, but you're expected to deliver the best work possible knowing it exists
- Why they'd rather compete against unsexy industries than fight 10 @ycombinator companies in an AI-native category
This is a great watch for anyone building a real-world business and trying to figure out where AI actually helps vs. where it's just hype.
Watch below!
Timestamps
Introduction and how Sam and Dan's paths first crossed: 00:00:00
What it means to be "the world's slowest incubator": 00:01:40
Why Bolton and Watt runs companies to several million in revenue before handing off to a CEO: 00:04:50
How specialization across the founding journey creates advantages: 00:07:30
Building AI-durable businesses versus AI-native ones: 00:10:40
How an AI agent transformed their customer discovery process: 00:16:10
Where synthetic customer calls completely fail: 00:19:30
Deploying AI inside established companies: 00:29:30
Why newer projects see huge gains from AI while mature companies see 10 percent: 00:32:30
A preview of what's next for Bolton and Watt: 00:37:00
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