Joshua Ness

@sciencevs @MerylEHorn @Penn The problem is that offices and classrooms aren't teaching workers and students to use AI correctly. Prompts that are structured and intentional will create specific and non-generic outputs that are way more helpful than inputting, "tell me how to have a healthy lifestyle."

I just listened to the @sciencevs episode on #AI making us stupid w/ @MerylEHorn & Dr. Shiri Melumad at @Penn. The panic is real, but misplaced. AI doesn't fry your brain. Bad prompting fries your ROI. If you treat a reasoning engine like a vending machine, you get mediocrity.

AI is not making us stupid. But laziness is. Most users treat LLMs like a search engine instead of a reasoning engine. When you give a mediocre prompt you get a mediocre response. The output is a direct reflection of your own clarity.

@vxanand @clay This is incredible! We'd love to hear you tell your story at @StartupGrindNYC

Today we hit $100M ARR at @clay. It took us six years to go from $0-1m, then two years to go from $1-100m. I’m going to walk you through the 6 biggest GTM bets that got us here. $100M ARR may be the headline, but I’m most proud of how we accomplished it: we’ve never churned an enterprise customer, have >200% enterprise NRR, every dollar we invest grows 15x (a ratio that has tripled in recent years), and we’ve created a culture of creativity and belonging (with a perfect Glassdoor score to match). Note: -We are a product-driven company. Without that foundation and a unique POV on the market, none of this would work. -Our GTM approach is authentic to us. This isn't a plug-and-play framework. Greatness comes from doing what only you can do. Here are the big bets that worked for us: 1. Building a self-serve motion through reverse demos We originally had a product that nobody could use. It took us 8 calls to sell a $200/mo product! Reverse demos were key to bringing that to zero. Customers would share their screen, and we’d use Zoom annotations to solve their problem in 30mins. They accomplished something real, learned how to use Clay, and we got so much UI feedback that we immediately applied to the product. 2. An irrational investment in brand Most B2B startups treat brand as a post-PMF investment. We flipped that. We bought Clay(.)com and hired a claymation artist before we had revenue. Our Head of Brand was employee #18. These choices felt irrational but they’re authentic to us and reflect our identity. Now it’s a moat. 3. Switching to usage-based pricing We were the first GTM company to offer usage-based pricing. Our customers were shocked we didn't charge per seat and our investors thought we were leaving money on the table. But we're a product built for efficiency. Usage-based pricing helped us target more technical users and enabled our land-and-expand motion. 4. Building an agency motion to generate UGC on LinkedIn Cold email agencies were our first customers. They posted about Clay organically to position themselves as experts and attract clients. We pounced on this and enabled them. This sparked a self-perpetuating cycle: new people discover Clay through that content, join, create their own, and earn recognition too. 5. Unconventional hiring 50% of our GTM and G&A teams are doing their job for the first time. This is how we bring creativity into our company and think differently. We’ve hired farmers, physicists, archaeologists, magicians in new roles. We look for product passion, customer empathy and technical curiosity, then teach the mechanics. 6. We created a new career path & economy: GTM Engineering There are now thousands of open GTME jobs and hundreds of agencies built around it. Many first-time entrepreneurs have already built 7-figure businesses on top of Clay. Our community, with clubs in more than 70 cities, is our force multiplier, and tells us more about impact than any metric ever could. - All of these bets show we’re not racing anyone. We spent six years figuring out what and how we wanted to build. In an era of overnight successes and growth at all costs, it turns out that taking time to build something authentic can create a business with bigger impact & more growth than you'd think. Our creativity remains our greatest alpha. That will continue to show up in how we do our work, who we hire, and in our boldest bets coming up next year.

This was a very fun Easter egg to see! #GMG @MeanGreenFB @UNTsocial

I'm sitting in a startup pitch session, wishing more of these companies with good ideas made an effort to differentiate between standalone and presentation decks. So much text! What are your go-to slide deck resources for effective presentations?

@JoannaStern This was so cool to read! Thank you for sharing this story with us.

Wrote about some of this process in my newsletter today: techthings.cmail20.com/t/d-e-syhnjd-i…

My mom had an old, damaged cassette tape of a 1978 interview she did with her grandfather, who fled Russia just before World War I. In it he marvels at the idea of simply speaking into a tape recorder. I had the tape restored and digitized. Then I dragged a little file into a little box and out came a decent AI transcription. (I had to fix a lot but I blame that mostly on the poor recording and thick accent.) Technology. It’s pretty awesome.

@FinkelsteinRyan Okay thank goodness

@FinkelsteinRyan First Diaz pitch in the ninth wild right and nope we do not have this in the bag.

@FinkelsteinRyan Is Jeff McNeil back?? That was great.

It’s a whole new Jeff McNeil! Or maybe just the old McNeil. What a week to kick off his second half!

@CNN why is @thelauracoates not in a better time slot? She's great on script and even better off. Way more interesting and fun to watch than AP... maybe even AC. No anchor is above the law.

@MarkusSkid68618 @ESPNPR @espn @FOXSports @wbd I see what you did there.

@ESPNPR @espn @FOXSports @wbd Probably expensiv...

Welcome, Venu Sports! Today, the ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery joint venture streaming sports service unveiled the new brand identity for the highly anticipated platform More: bit.ly/4bpPRoP

@BBCJamesM @BBCNewshour Turns out we're just real people after all, the lot of us.

@jcness @BBCNewshour Not mine! It was actually a playout mistake -- a rehearsal version instead of the live opener

@BBCJamesM @BBCNewshour I don't know what just happened, but it's my new favorite thing.

@RyanFieldABC @ABC7 @MLS @NewYorkRedBulls In case you missed it. pix11.com/sports/gotham-… @GothamFC

@RyanFieldABC @ABC7 @MLS @NewYorkRedBulls Neither do the Jets, Mets, Giants, or Yankees. But you still included NFL and MLB. Soccer is a major league sport. Let's please treat it like one.

@RyanFieldABC @ABC7 Sports Equinox also includes @MLS where our own @NewYorkRedBulls are competing in the playoffs. Come on, man. No good reason to exclude soccer, especially when hometown team is involved.

@RyanFieldABC @ABC7 @MLS @NewYorkRedBulls Correct. But MLS matches ARE being played tonight, and our @NewYorkRedBulls are in this postseason. Let's not diminish @MLS when discussing major league sports, especially when New York fields two teams (just like the others).

This was very cool to conceptualize and film. @CompassDCs is the best. Take a look for a few fresh perspectives on connectivity and emerging technology.

@RepDanGoldman I'm your constituent in Brooklyn. Why did you side with maga Republicans today? You could have voted to keep the Speaker and make progress for the county, but you didn't. Now we all look foolish and no budget headway will be made and we'll be here again in Nov.