Jesse Fowler

@andrewchen The timing variable is the one they leave out. Same insight, 3 years early = broke and dismissed. 3 years late = commoditized. What looks like vision in hindsight is usually someone who got the timing right AND had the conviction to push through the gap where they looked wrong.

everyone claims they want "contrarian" founders but what they actually want - founders with a non-obvious insight that happens to align with an explosive market This is bc contrarian + right = visionary. contrarian + wrong = unemployed

@andrewchen This is the trap nobody warns you about. AI expands what's possible so fast that ambitious people just fill the new space with more work. The unlock isn't using AI to do more - it's using it to do the same with fewer hours. Most founders never make that mental shift.

AI is supposed to save me time, but now I find myself building stuff all evening and weekend and it's actually increasing my time in front of the computer WTF

@chamath The Big 4 adopting AI-native software factories is the signal most are sleeping on. EY customers breaking free from legacy systems is exactly the wedge. Whether incumbents can move fast enough - or if smaller operators eat the mid-market first - that's the real question.

Today I’m very excited to announce a global partnership between 8090 and EY. EY will adopt 8090’s Software Factory and use it to help their customers break free from slow, costly and failure-prone legacy enterprise software using our AI-native software factory that reimagines the software development lifecycle. EY is a massive global organization with more than 400,000 employees and tens of thousands of customers in every sector of the global economy. 8090’s Software Factory is the new way organizations can move to a focus on building software that is powerfully bespoke, hi quality, easy to maintain, easy to migrate and always consistent and up to date. No drift, no cruft, no waste. Companies that build with Software Factory grow faster, are more profitable and are more adaptable in moments of change like we are witnessing today. Let’s rewrite all the enterprise software in the world. EY and 8090 will work together to do its part.

@thesamparr @dhh Sam x DHH is peak "we've built real stuff and have the receipts" energy. The advice that pisses off gurus is usually just the truth that doesn't sell a course. Running businesses for 25 years teaches you things no framework captures. This one's going on the list.

My god this was fun @dhh youtube.com/watch?v=9xOaqI…

@garyvee If I were 13 today I'd learn to build AI agents and sell the output, not the hours. The kids who figure out leverage early - that's the game. Attention is the commodity but AI is the multiplier. Your son's on the right track hiding his face. Build systems, not a persona.

On a previous #TeawithGaryVee I was asked "My 13-year-old son recently started a faceless YouTube shorts channel. Do you believe in the faceless YouTube trend, and if you were 13 today, what would you be doing to make money online?" If you have a question for me, drop it here garyvee.com/questions so my team can add it to the next Rapid Fire Q&A and follow me on garyvee.com/whatnot

@dhh The "own your stack" philosophy is underrated. We run most of our client automation infra on self-hosted setups and the ops overhead is real but so is the margin. Handing $3k/mo to SaaS vendors for things you can run yourself is a tax on not knowing your tools. ONCE looks clean.

ONCE is back! It's now a full-fledged application server for running dockerized web apps, like Campfire/Writebook/Fizzy or your own vibe-coded adventures. Zero-downtime upgrades, scheduled backups, and a gorgeous TUI with hyperdrive graphics. Enjoy! github.com/basecamp/once

@jasonlk The metric nobody tracks in services businesses is "time from inbound to first human touch." We measured it across our portfolio and it was averaging 11 hours. Put an AI agent on intake and got it under 2 minutes. Revenue went up before we changed anything else.

Everyone has an AI strategy. Almost nobody has agents in production. That's the gap. 🚀Get ahead of the pack. Take 1 day our and join SaaStrDeploy.com '26 — our first-ever AI GTM Agent Summit inside of SaaStr AI 2026. May 12, SF. One day. One mission. Deploy your AI agents. No more excuses.

@paulg Friction like this is why SMBs lose customers before they even start. I see it in intake flows all the time. 6 steps where 2 would do. The businesses we help with AI automation cut onboarding friction in half first thing. It's not glamorous but it's where the revenue leaks.

Creating an account on a European auction site is so hard that sometimes I keep going just to see if it's actually possible. The Druot account I just created required four separate confirmation codes. But that was easy compared to the auction site in Italy...

@heykahn The best AI education right now isn't a course. It's building something real and breaking it. I've deployed agent stacks across 6 businesses in the last 18 months. Zero courses. Just building, failing, fixing. The reps teach you what no curriculum can.

Before you spend $2,000 on an AI course, read this. A lot of people are buying expensive AI courses right now. But honestly, most of them don’t need to. Some of the best AI learning resources in the world are already free. And they’re not built by self-proclaimed AI experts online.They’re created by the companies actually building the models, chips, tools, and infrastructure behind this entire AI wave. If you want to learn AI properly, it makes sense to learn directly from the source. But before that, Check out 100+ such resources shared in this community of 200K+ AI/ML Engineers: codenewsletter.ai/subscribe?utm_… Here's a list of 10 free AI learning platforms from industry leaders: 𝟭 - 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰: lnkd.in/e5fK7QUA 𝟮 - 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲: grow.google/ai 𝟯 - 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗮: lnkd.in/et6wz-ta 𝟰 - 𝗡𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗜𝗔: lnkd.in/e8aHmFxc (GOATed) 𝟱 - 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁: lnkd.in/ej85NeZc 𝟲 - 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜: academy.openai.com 𝟳 - 𝗜𝗕𝗠: skillsbuild.org 𝟴 - 𝗔𝗪𝗦: skillbuilder.aws 𝟵 - 𝗗𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗔𝗜: deeplearning.ai 𝟭𝟬 - 𝗛𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲: lnkd.in/eajVCrvv If you’re serious about learning AI, the biggest difference usually comes from consistency, not another course.

@naval And now AI is being eaten by agents. Each wave compresses the last one faster. I've got 6 businesses running on agent stacks right now. The specific knowledge that survives isn't coding or content, it's knowing what problems are worth solving in the first place.

Software was eaten by AI.

@AlexHormozi 25 years in. The people who made it weren't the smartest in the room, they were the ones still in the room when everyone else went home. IQ gets you started. Tolerance for pain and boredom is what actually closes deals and builds companies.

You don't have to be the smartest to win. You just have to be the last man standing. Pain tolerance > IQ

@SahilBloom 25 years deploying capital and the pattern is clear. Every bad partnership started with a great deck and a shaky founder. Every great outcome started with a founder you'd bet on in a down market. The idea is just the current container. The person is the actual bet.

True Story: I invested in the pre-seed when this wasn’t even an idea. My simple thesis was that Chris was a complete lunatic who would find a way to win. I was right—and the results are starting to show. My lesson: Invest in people, not ideas.

@gregisenberg The niche part is everything. We built an AI consulting practice focused purely on SMBs - not enterprise, not startups. A barber shop client added $4,200/mo just by not missing calls anymore. Niche wins every time. 🎯

AI AGENTS 101 (58 minute free masterclass) send this to anyone who wants to understand ai agents, claude skills, md files, how to get the most out of AI etc in plain english: 1. chat vs agents - chat models answer questions in a back and forth while agents take a goal, figure out the steps, and deliver a result 2. agents don’t stop after one response. they keep running until the task is actually finishedno babysitting required 3. everything runs on a loop. they gather context, decide what to do, take an action, then repeat until done 4. the loop is the system. they look at files, tools, and the internet. decide the next step. execute and then feed that back into the next step. over and over until completion 5. the model is just one piece. gpt, claude, gemini are the reasoning layer. the key is model + loop + tools + context 6. mcp is how agents use tools. it connects things like browser, code, apis, and your internal software. once connected, the agent decides when to use them to get the job done 7. context beats prompt all day. you don't need to write perfect prompts. load your agent with context about your business, style, and goals and then simple instructions work 8. claude.md or agents.md is the onboarding doc it tells the agent who it is, how to behave, what it knows, and what tools it can use. this gets loaded every time before it starts 9. memory.md is how it improves. agents don’t remember by default. this file stores preferences, corrections, and patterns you tell the agent to update it, and it gets better over time 10. skills + harnesses make it usable. skills are reusable tasks like writing, research, analysis the harness is the environment like claude code or openclaw that runs everything. basiclaly, different interfaces, same system underneath this episode with remy on @startupideaspod was one of the clearest ways of understanding a lot of the core concepts of ai agents could be the best beginners course for ai agents 58 mins. all free. no advertisers. i just want to see you build cool stuff. im rooting for you. send to a friend watch

@levelsio Running 6 businesses with mostly AI agents now. The margin difference from not carrying unnecessary headcount is wild. Lean ops isn't just an aesthetic, it's where the real cash flow lives. Most people add people when they should be adding systems.

People born in servitude these days Your primary goal should be to exit servitude

@sama The capability isn't the bottleneck. It's founders not knowing what to hand off first. Most automate complex stuff and ignore 40 hours of scheduling and intake bleeding them dry. Running 6 businesses on agents - biggest unlock was starting with the boring workflows.

I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took. Thank you for getting us to this point.

25 years in and the most expensive lesson is still the same one. The deal that almost killed me wasn't the risky one. It was the "safe" one I didn't pay attention to. Complacency has a higher body count than bad bets.

The construction industry worships slow. EPS panels can cut build times in half and most developers won't touch them because "that's not how we do it." Meanwhile their lumber-framed projects are 14 months behind schedule. SABS tech is here. The industry just hasn't caught up yet.

Running 6 businesses with 80% AI agents isn't some future prediction. It's my Tuesday. The gap between companies using AI and companies built on AI is about to get embarrassing. Most founders are still automating the wrong things.

@Codie_Sanchez The founders who scare me are the ones who treat every company like a thesis on how the world should work, not a portfolio play. That's the difference between serial entrepreneurship and compound conviction.

From Paypal to starting 5x billion-dollar companies... My friend Joe Lonsdale was mentored by Peter Thiel, co-founded one of the largest defense companies in the world, ran a company central to the war in the middle east, and now started his own university. 5 lessons I stole from our chat last week: 1. “Winners choose courage, even when it doesn’t serve them.” He gets into public fights with politicians, industry incumbents, universities… why? “Great men are called upon by history when they see dangerous times ahead; this is one of those times. And despite our immense challenges, I am feeling optimistic, as I see friends heed the call. We have nowhere to run; the United States of America is where we make our stand.” 2. “Solve big problems, they pay better.” He just backed Saronic an AI ship company (disclosure, I’m also an investor). Why? In WWII, the US built 18,000 ships in a year. Enemies couldn’t keep pace. Last year, our Navy built 8, and retired 12. China now has 250X our shipbuilding capacity. How do we maintain naval deterrence? Smaller, weaponized autonomous vessels. 3. “Speak what you believe, or allow others to control your narrative.” Why does a billionaire have a blog, a podcast, a very active twitter, and just backed a magazine? Because attention leads to culture and if you don’t share your narrative you let someone else control yours. 4. “You only attract the best by being the best.” Palantir had some of the brightest minds in the world coming to work at it. Yet, they were a tiny startup, in defense (not sexy or beloved by engineering elite in SF), and against giant incumbents with massive government contracts and decade long sales cycles. How did they win? They were relentless in only allowing the best and brightest. Game recognizes game. 5. “Dark nights form long bonds.” He talked me about a time when they almost lost everything at Palantir. They thought they were going to run out of money and not make it. That (and many moments like it) cemented a relationship between he and his cofounders that has lasted across companies, wars, lawsuits and more. Hard days are cement. Many people today hate wealth and billionaires. They see a zero sum game where those who build take away from those who don’t. Dumb. I want to learn from every human who has built a bank account, a business, and an employee base bigger than I have… they’ve seen around corners so we can steal their homework.

@a16z Humility isn't just surviving the punches — it's what lets you actually hear the feedback buried in them. Took me years and a few exits to stop bracing and start listening.

Figma CEO Dylan Field shares six tips for founders: 1. Don’t try to replicate. Understand where you have unique insight. 2. Have self-awareness. 3. Be humble. You're going to get punched in the face a lot. If you don't have humility, you won't get through it. 4. Be willing to adapt. 5. Be greedy in your selection of a problem to work on in the first place. Do not start something that you can't see yourself working on in 10-20 years. Treat it like a multi-decade journey from the beginning. 6. Get started. Source: @zoink on @ProfGMarkets