Lawand Soran

Companies spend months onboarding a new employee l shadowing, documentation, context transfers, "here's how we actually do things here." Then they deploy an agent with a two-paragraph system prompt and wonder why it doesn't perform. The agent isn't the problem. The onboarding is. And unlike a human, the agent won't figure it out over time. It wakes up a stranger every single session, until you give it a real foundation to build on.

@unusual_whales I am looking to spend less money on AI . Not social life so I am 75% or 25% ?

"75% of Gen Z said that they were actively looking for ways to spend less money, especially in their social lives when making plans with friends by suggesting free or lower-cost activities, ordering cheaper menu items or fewer drinks," per FOX

@unusual_whales The gap widens because giants can afford to wait. They have time and money to let agents learn their systems. Small companies need ROI now, so they rush it and fail.The moat isn't the AI. It's the capital to implement it right.

AI is likely to widen the gap between corporate giants and everyone else, per Goldman Sachs

Companies are firing before their agents are ready. You can't automate what you don't understand first. Agents need time to learn your company your processes, your data, the weird edge cases. They need context. And someone watching them. They're not trustworthy enough yet to replace someone doing complex work. Most companies skip that and just cut headcount. Then they're shocked when it fails.The teams winning are using agents to help their people do more. Not replace them.Agents will get there. Just not today.

"AI isn't paying off in the way companies think. Layoffs driven by automation are failing to generate returns," per FORTUNE.

The real 2026 AI moat isn’t building more agents. It’s giving every agent persistent companya memory.I learned this the hard way watching my family’s small business lose deals and waste money because no one could see the full picture in time. That pain is exactly why I’m building @OpsRadar .Most founders are still treating agents like flashy chatbots that reset every session. They forget your brand voice, your last quarter’s lessons, your exact tools and processes, your tribal knowledge everything. Result? Expensive interns you have to babysit constantly.The smart move is different. Build one Company Brain, a single persistent memory layer that connects all your agents to your company’s real history and systems. Suddenly every agent wakes up with 5 years of institutional wisdom instead of zero. It’s the quiet framework the best operators are already putting in place while everyone else chases the next model upgrade.This isn’t hype. It’s the shift from “cool demo” to “actual teammate.”Founders running agents right now what’s the biggest memory-related frustration you’re hitting. #CompanyBrain

@MartinGTobias Lived problems give you something no market research can: intuition. You notice details outsiders don't even know to look for.

The best founders solve problems they've lived. Not problems they've read about.

JUST IN: Those who invested $10.41 in IBM in 1932 are now millionaires.

@ycombinator @gravy_finance @alitabba_ @DevMaxC Congrats 🎉

Gravy is building Agents for your money. @gravy_finance connects to your banks, investments, email and more to explain your money and automate your financial tasks. Congrats on the launch, @alitabba_ & @DevMaxC! ycombinator.com/launches/QdW-g…

@unusual_whales Every major platform shift eventually leaves the software layer and starts reshaping the physical world. $50B/month in data centers. Surprising 😳

Spending on data-center construction in the US eclipsed $50 billion in April for the first time, per Bloomberg.

@RicardoIQSource @nateherk Exactly 💯.

The pyramid is the part most people skip because agents sell better than a ten-line rule. But the honest answer is usually the boring tier: cheaper, breaks less, ships in a week. We score each process on how high it justifies climbing, and the clients who last are the ones who let the score say "base, no AI" without flinching. iqsource.ai/en/blog/pyrami…

"AI consultant" is one of the hottest titles in business right now. But it also has an expiration date. Right now, sticking "AI" in front of "consultant" is a real edge. The search demand is there. The budgets are there. Companies are actively hunting for someone who can walk in, look at their operations, and tell them what to actually do with this stuff. So if you're trying to position yourself, take the label. It works. But the label is the temporary part and we've seen this cycle before. → When Excel showed up, people might've called themselves "Excel accountants." But how ridiculous would it be if someone introduced themselves like that today? → When the internet showed up, people spun up "internet marketing" agencies. Now that's just marketing. AI is doing the same thing to consulting because AI is going to seep into everything. In a few years, the qualifier drops. The consultants who aren't AI native won't be winning business. They'll just be bad consultants. The job under the hood doesn't change. A consultant walks into a business, finds the actual constraint, and prescribes a solution. The newest tech is the toolbox, not the job description. But people take the "AI consultant" title and assume the answer always has to be AI. Sometimes the right call is a database restructure. Sometimes it's a better SaaS tool. Sometimes it's a deterministic workflow with zero AI in it. I'm not saying AI is never the answer. It's the highest-impact tool we've had in a long time. But forcing it where it doesn't belong is how clients lose trust fast. I think about it as a pyramid. → Bottom: deterministic workflows. No AI. Cheap, fast, reliable. → Middle: AI workflows. More power, more cost, more failure modes. → Top: AI agents. Maximum capability, maximum risk, longest time to ship. The higher you climb, the more it costs, the longer it takes, and the more ways it breaks. More risk. Start at the bottom. Only move up when the problem actually demands it. The label "AI consultant" gets you in the door right now. The discipline of solving the real problem with the simplest possible solution is what keeps you there once everyone else catches up. Grab the label while the window is open. Just don't confuse it with the job.

@YarlCung @paulg Paul asks for examples. I deliver.😂

@LawandOps @paulg you used an ai reply in response to a post about ai replies. amazing.

Why are AI-generated replies so often framed as an opposition between two things? Is there a popular bot that does this? Are such tweets known to be especially engaging? Or is this just what an AI does by default when you ask it to write a tweet?

@mynameisyahia That's great congrats 🎉

I got into YC S26 as a solo founder! The last 15 months looked something like this: > Started an API company from scratch > Realized building infrastructure is insanely hard > Grew slowly for months > Then all at once > Reached 210 paying customers > Landed 10 unicorns + 70 VC-backed startups > Started telling customers "not yet" because I couldn't afford to build everything they wanted > Wait, I actually need funding > Applied to YC > Rejected > Doubled revenue > Applied again Today I'm in. To all my customers who trusted me when I was just some random dude from the internet, thank you.

@dhaber The best startup ecosystems aren't defined by founders. They're defined by proximity to customers. AI is moving from research to deployment, and that's where NYC has an edge.

The best founders don't end up in New York by accident. They come because this is where the hardest problems, the biggest customers, and the highest stakes are. The city demands you build something real. I've always believed the best opportunities live between fields of expertise — not inside any single industry, but at the intersections. No city in the world has more intersections than New York. Finance and media. Healthcare and technology. The customers who need AI to actually work — banks, hospitals, newsrooms, asset managers — are all here, within a few miles of each other. AI adoption is accelerating faster than any cycle I've seen. Per @PitchBook, AI is now 65% of NYC venture deal value, up from 16% six years ago. Early-stage funding hit $8.9B in 2025, up 50% in a year. Active unicorns: 32 in 2019, 159 today. The infrastructure of a generational tech hub is being built in real time. We're still early. The biggest deals haven't happened. The companies that define applied AI haven't been built. The founders who build them will be ambitious. They'll want to be where the problems are. They'll be here. NY @Techweek_ starts today. Come build 🗽

@dessaigne Founders don’t lose leverage by staying close they lose it by trusting signals they haven’t validated yet. Senior experience helps, but alignment is always earned in context, not resumes.

Everyone says: hire people better than you, then get out of the way. One of my biggest mistakes at Algolia was taking that literally. Yes, hire people better than you. But don’t confuse seniority with earned trust. Stay close at first. Inspect the work. Pressure-test the judgment. If you’re still micromanaging after 3 months, you hired the wrong person. And trust your gut. As a founder, you are the most fine-tuned model in the world on your own company. If something feels off, it probably is, even when the exec says, “Trust me, I’ve done this for 20 years.”

@TMTLongShort Transformers were the spark, but the real explosion is coming from compounding systems built on top of them. The question isn’t how many breakthroughs we’ve had, it’s how fast we can iterate on them now.

Since ChatGPT came out something like $10T in market cap has been added due to the AI boom. Almost entirely driven by Shazeer & co outlining the transformer architecture in their 2017 paper. If you want to be generous you can also throw in test-time compute, multi modality, long-horizon planning and temporal consistency into the mix but overall the number of major breakthroughs can be counted on a single hand. And you’re telling me you’re cynical when we are about to have models capable of pumping out new ideas like transformers by the boatload?

@AnthropicAI Anthropic filing an S-1 is a signal: frontier AI is turning into public infrastructure. The next decade will be shaped by how these companies scale safely and profitably.

Anthropic has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pending completion of SEC review, this gives us the option to pursue an initial public offering. Read more: anthropic.com/news/confident…

@alvinfoo 100%. Most teams are still treating AI like a plugin. The real leap happens when AI becomes the operating layer of the company, everything else will look slow in comparison.

@LawandOps The companies that treat AI as their new OS, not just another tool are going to pull way ahead. Huge opportunity for those willing to do the real work.

The most valuable industries in the world tell a fascinating story. A decade ago, the biggest companies were built on physical assets, energy, and financial infrastructure. Today? Technology dominates. AI alone is now worth $22.6 trillion in market value. Semiconductors, software, electronics, and tech hardware sit at the center of the global economy. But here’s the insight many people miss: AI isn’t replacing industries. AI is becoming the operating system for every industry. 🏦 Finance will be AI-powered. 🏭 Manufacturing will be AI-powered. ⚡ Energy will be AI-powered. 🚗 Transportation will be AI-powered. 🧬 Biotech will be AI-powered. The next wave of wealth creation won’t come from simply using AI tools. It will come from understanding how AI, data, software, and hardware converge to transform entire businesses and industries. The companies creating the future are no longer asking: “Should we adopt AI?” They’re asking: “How fast can we redesign our organization around AI?” This chart is more than a ranking of market caps. It’s a roadmap of where capital, talent, innovation, and opportunity are flowing. The biggest risk today isn’t AI. The biggest risk is standing still while the world compounds exponentially around you. If you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or professional, now is the time to build your AI capability, rethink your workflows, and prepare for the next decade of transformation. The AI revolution won’t wait for anyone. Ready to future-proof yourself and your business? Take the free AI Diagnostic and subscribe to the 10XMe.biz AI Newsletter for practical strategies, tools, and insights to help you thrive in the age of AI. The future belongs to those who learn faster than change itself.

@unusual_whales Whether it’s 10x or 50x, the signal is clear: every company becomes an AI company. The advantage will go to builders who ship fast, not those who predict numbers.

AI revolution is '50x bigger' than the dotcom boom, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son has said

@itsolelehmann Exactly. The winner won’t be the most powerful agent stack, it’ll be the one that removes the most friction.

I think the AI superapps will soon own 90% of the agentic layer more and more people won't use hermes/openclaw etc because Claude Cowork/Codex will offer 90% of the functionality with 5% of the friction