Yasser Ansari

@henrythe9ths AI Guide

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)

@karrisaarinen 💯

You can absolutely know what your brand is before PMF. Brand is the understanding of what the company is, what it stands for, the quality standards, who you hire, what we do, how we do it, and why. Consistency is crucial for a brand; it's like the soul or personality of your company. Then external brand will follow. Brand is probably the cheapest thing you can do in startup. It’s literally you knowing what it is and sharing with others. @linear has spent total in $35k in marketing, but we have built a brand from the actions we do. The trap here is that many “product hackers” just try to brute force their way in to PMF/companies and never stop to think why they are doing what they are doing.

@howard @jbrod it was a great location choice for the chefs of staff meetup!

@jjen_abel Very exciting. Congrats on the launch! 💪🏽🔥🚀

@KiersToby @HenryLabSymbio @CKCornwallis @StuWest8 @JacinthaEllers @malin_kln @BioRaphaella Incredibly fascinating

In retrospect, it was an insane idea to characterize 1,850 microbe–insect symbioses across 402 insect families. But last friday, it was published. Heroic effort: @HenryLabSymbio @CKCornwallis @StuWest8 @JacinthaEllers @malin_kln @BioRaphaella v/ 'tpadje nature.com/articles/s4155…

@stevenjr76 @PolymerSearch @ProductHunt Thanks for the support @stevenjr76 and for backing us from the start. 🚀

For startups or SMBs without big budgets and dedicated data scientists -- build your business insights with @PolymerSearch! Exciting new upgrade to the app came out today on @ProductHunt -- check them out and leave some feedback. #BIWithoutTheBS

Thanks for the support @Sierra_Ventures! You’ve been in our corner since day one.

@Balldontlie That’s 1 jimmy buckets

The Celtics punch their ticket to the Eastern Conference semis 🍀 Jaylen and Jayson combined ▪️62 PTS ▪️19 REB ▪️9 AST

@billbarhydt @crazybob RIP @crazybob

I just got devastating news that our friend Bob Lee (@crazybob ) was killed in SF early today. Bob was a dad, the former CTO of Square where he created Cash App & CTO of Mobile Coin.  He was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed. sfgate.com/bayarea/articl…

@zachweinberg You should take a look at @roam.

@emollick And here’s a slightly less subtle approach adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/

In the end, it may come down to a battle between AI… and contouring. This study found it was possible to apply makeup in way that confused the latest machine facial recognition systems 98% of the time while looking entirely natural to other people. arxiv.org/abs/2109.06467

@schlaf Missoula, hands down. Soak in the natural beauty and channel your inner Norman Maclean + David Lynch. And if you really want to unplug, I’ll take you fly fishing.

I have 5 days in early April for a mini “think week.” Looking to get away, unplug, read and write. Where should I go?

@icreatelife Shout out to Kelvin Mu @translink_cap for putting this together.

Top investors in Generative AI (March 2023)

@RoxanaDaneshjou Avoiding Rash Decisions: Understanding the role of AI in Dermatology

I have a bunch of AI in Dermatology talks coming up, and I wanted to crowdsource tongue-in-cheek titles. This is one I'm submitting: "Skin in the Game: the state of AI in Dermatology". Other thoughts?

@soffes Van Francisco

Going to start a little business building camper vans for people. What should I name the company?

@flytip Gratuitous gratuities

We need a new phrase to describe the anxious feeling you get when you’re confronted with the Square terminal tip screen. It happens at least 2-3x a day to me.

I absolutely think of it as an activation enzyme and now as “ChatGPTase” courtesy of @GabboV 🧬

My new inspiration > idea > invention stack: 1. Play & Explore -- Arc Browser by @browsercompany 2. Question & Analyze -- Poe by @quora + @bing AI 3. Capture & Reflect -- @mymind 4. Synthesize & Expand -- @NotionHQ with Notion AI

New year, new you! Join us for our first webinar later this week and learn how to quickly build beautiful reports and dashboards with data using @PolymerSearch

Really excited for @oceansventures as they begin to lead/co-lead pre-seed & seed deals! Easily one of the best decisions we made was bringing them onboard early. Every partner has helped us in a meaningful way and we're pretty much like family now. LMK if you’d like an intro!