taylor

why I built a fund operating platform taylordavidson.com/2026/portfolio…

where it ended up

when I spend 100 hours writing code to automate 2 hours of manual work

@andrewchen even I'm spending more time writing code than building spreadsheets

prediction re the end of spreadsheets AI code gen means that anything that is currently modeled as a spreadsheet is better modeled in code. You get all the advantages of software - libraries, open source, AI, all the complexity and expressiveness. think about what spreadsheets actually are: they're business logic that's trapped in a grid. Pricing models, financial forecasts, inventory trackers, marketing attribution - these are all fundamentally *programs* that we've been writing in the worst possible IDE. No version control, no testing, no modularity. Just a fragile web of cell references that breaks when someone inserts a row. The only reason spreadsheets won is that the barrier to writing real software was too high. A finance analyst could learn =VLOOKUP in an afternoon but couldn't learn Python in a month. AI code gen flips that equation completely. Now the same analyst describes what they want in plain English, and gets a real application - with a database, a UI, error handling, the works. The marginal effort to go from "spreadsheet" to "software" just collapsed to near zero. this is a massive unlock. There are ~1 billion spreadsheet users worldwide. Most of them are building janky software without realizing it. When even 10% of those use cases migrate to actual code, you get an explosion of new micro-applications that look nothing like traditional software. Internal tools that used to live in a shared Google Sheet now become real products. The "shadow IT" spreadsheet that runs half the company's operations finally gets proper infrastructure. The interesting second-order effect: the spreadsheet was the great equalizer that let non-technical people build things. AI code gen is the *next* great equalizer, but the ceiling is 100x higher. We're about to see what happens when a billion knowledge workers can build real software.

agreed linkedin.com/pulse/watching…

@cfo_mm two hours is wild

Let me know your thoughts. Anything here worth iterating on or is this crap? I have 2 hrs into this at this point……..

When I was sick this weekend I built a thing with AI.. Enter a ticker and 4 agents research it from different points of view. Then a moderator agents hosts a 3 round debate amongst the 4 analysts. It then determines a consensus view. agent-debate-app.vercel.app/analysis/zzowe…

another day, another AI model building company downloading all of my models as training data

same goes with financial forecasts. beware of models created by AI that leverage business logic you don't fully understand, as the unknown unknowns could get you. foresight.is/ai-models/

here's the first: don't trust your AI with your cap table math: foresight.is/ai-cap-table/

I should write a series of posts of all the things your favorite AI gets wrong in cap table calculations and structures. (and then would AI get stop making those mistakes?)

i'd love to see the financial model for this

one of the odder photo publication credits I've ever received nypost.com/2025/10/13/us-…

opportunity overhead

"When somebody uses merge it is probably a good sign that their models are s***." edbodmer.com/learning-from-…

@shl @wzulfikar @flexile one difficulty in taking equity as comp is the friction around getting paid in equity, using @flexile is a big help

@wzulfikar Yep! Moving all vendors to @flexile and asking all of our major ones to take 50% of their comp in equity

Our legal firm is now taking 50% of their billable rate in Gumroad equity Why? 1. AI is going to take their job 2. Taking less upfront cash delays that 3. Equity + dividends means they’ll keep making money when it does

@investing_law I'll second that. I've recently received many more requests for models for open-ended funds. (that said, at the end of the day most of them go back to pursuing closed-end funds)

Open-ended funds are so hot right now 🔥 Many GPs are considering evergreen vehicles instead of forming sequential 10-year closed-end funds. ⚠️ However, if you're in an illiquid asset class (real estate, private equity, venture), you need to be extra careful with open-ended funds. You don't want LP redemption requests to create a run on the bank, where you have to fire-sale assets. 📉 Most open-ended funds have lock-up periods and gates to throttle redemptions and help the GP with liquidity management.

@BoringBiz_ been there, done that x.com/tdavidson/stat…

Your analyst sends you a draft of the LBO model and this is the first formula you see What is your reaction?

@lessin curious, what book is that?

The internet has dramatically changed the patterns of human storytelling ... and as my 7 year old's bedtime story reminds us, that changes everything.

@gumroad @matthewvgrogan Please reconsider this. It makes it much harder for sellers to help people understand what Gumroad is and how it works. Also, please tell creators before doing stuff like this, finding out days later without notice isn’t a great experience.

@matthewvgrogan We’ve removed our help docs in favor of in-app live chat! Real-time “help docs”

@gumroad I can't seem to get to help.gumroad.com - it keeps redirecting to the homepage. Can you get that up ASAP or give me an alternative URL?

important to know if you're a maker or a taker in a situation