Erik Blachford

@henrythe9ths AI Guide - thank you!

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)

Spencer had the really hard job of getting us public, which he did masterfully.  I captained through the Covid storm.  And we're both excited for @zillow 's next chapter under Jeremy's leadership.  Zillow has huge opportunity in front of it and is gaining momentum.  Thanks, Spencer, and congrats, Jeremy.

Proud and excited to pass the baton to Jeremy Wacksman, @ZillowGroup’s new CEO. I will move to co-chair the board with my co-founder, Lloyd Frink, and will remain engaged to support Jeremy and the Zillow team. Even though Zillow is approaching 20 years of “age,” the adventure and the opportunity ahead of the company has only just begun. Jeremy’s a 15-year veteran of Zillow and has led most of the company for the last 3 years as COO. Here’s why he’s the right CEO for Zillow now: zlw.re/4cfesfD

In so many ways

Smart travel PR/Content marketing here Travelers' favorite airplane seats axios.com/2024/07/31/air…

Incredible effort here

Wait, what? A post that isn’t about politics and addresses something substantial and interesting!

@DylanWa68690046 Been here, done that

The year is 2045. The first astronauts have landed on Mars. They find a cave with a human skeleton. And 4 words are written on the wall. What are the four words

@joshelman The missing link? Amazon buys one of the three credit rating agencies. Now we’re talking…

@erikbl Starting / self insuring may be an interesting bet for them. Agree it doesn’t feel great to have one place know so much about you

I think it will be really helpful if my doctor can look at my package order history and the food I get at Whole Foods before making any diagnoses

@joshelman And why stop at health insurance? I’m not some conspiracy guy as you know. Just seems like strategically where you head if you want the richest possible 360 data view of the public.

@AnnieJacobsen FADE IN School district Head of Security BOB COYOAS, at his desk, watches a video of a robotic dog firing a machine gun, smiles, and picks up his phone. BOB Carl? Yeah, we aren’t going to need to give guns to the teachers after all. (Scary is right)

Frightening [1/3]

@Jason Biden because if Trump moves back in to the White House, he’ll become the tenant who just won’t leave…

If faced with Biden v Trump again in 2024 who will you vote for? Hit reply and explain your thinking

Manchin’s a Republican in Dem clothing, so it’s really a 51/49 Republican majority Senate, even if on paper it’s Democrat led. And the GOP is just running out the clock. Easier to make sense of the current mess from that POV. For me, anyway. Biden & Co never had a prayer.

@Jason No Limits because longevity is about to explode (only for those with money obv, bec it’s the USA) - but how about an annual test of cognition, executive function etc to avoid situations like the current Feinstein problem?

What should the age limit be for running for President of the United States? 🇺🇸 [ Hit reply and explain your thinking ]

Webb telescope has me wondering - what if the point is to be the first civilization to solve the Big Bang problem - Earth as one contestant in an Escape Room competition - political idiocy, gas prices etc don’t matter at all - useless clues in the room - science is the cavalry 🤷‍♂️

@Jason I hit my numbers, again

Delight your investors in 5 words

Damn, maybe I should have taken that macro Econ class in college

@todgoldberg I just asked my dog and he said that whoever asks a question like that can give him a call and he’ll set things straight

To all founders and CEO’s who insist they don’t need media training (not a sub-tweet), watch this and try to tell me that he hasn’t taken media training just as seriously as Steph Curry takes practicing three-pointers. Nobody can do this without putting in the work.