@TheSalonDon Not if you can raise 1B in AUM... that's how the economics on the buy side work. You don't even need to outperform!
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Deep Insight Labs
838 posts
Deep Insight Labs
@DeepInsightLabs
AI agents for financial research and due diligence
Присоединился Mart 2025
353 Подписки144 Подписчики
If you’re smart enough to beat the market
Investing in stocks is the worst use of your time
Even if you have $10m and can beat the market by 3% you are working for $300k per year
Meanwhile there’s guys making $20m per year with hot yoga studios
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@FeifanZ People will find a way to over engineer stuff whether it's LLMs or writing code..
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I once talked to someone with a 12-step workflow that involved multiple rounds of planning, few of which involved LLMs actually touching the code, and they were convinced it led to better results.
Quinn Slack@sqs
An uncomfortable truth about building agents/models: By default, your most lucrative, most-smitten customers will be those using intricate out-of-band techniques that are exorbitantly expensive and probably net negative (but that they love). It's a very weird incentive. You can't and don't want to indulge this. There's nothing wrong with experimentation, but if you saw what every agent company sees, you'd know this goes way beyond experimentation. Amp tries really hard to prevent this: limiting long context, showing prices, not recommending swarms or loops prematurely, strongly advising against big MCPs, killing features that have high usage but that aren't worth it anymore, and just generally staying away from any hype train we don't have a good gut feeling about. Pi and OpenCode are also particularly good and outspoken here. But if you have growth targets to hit, investors to pitch, and salespeople to keep happy, or if you didn't start this way from day 1, I can see it being tricky. At Amp, we're profitable, don't have salespeople, and have no sales/growth targets to hit, so we have it relatively easy. I often wonder what this tension is like inside other companies building agents. (And for the record: if you've shown me your Amp workflow and I haven't told you this directly, this post is not about you. :)
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@isareksopuro Getting into Forbes 30u30 I can understand, but getting into YC and even getting VC funding? Says a lot about the state of things..
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state of silicon valley:
> Delve (YC W24)
>"AI Native"
>literally no AI
>forbes 30u30 founders
>charges $6k for a chatgpt'd legal contract
>uses Indian contractors to fake data (impersonating as US-based CPAs)
> leaked sensitive client data (Lovable, Cluely) & blamed it on AI...?
erin griffith@eringriffith
A detailed and brutal look at the tactics of buzzy AI compliance startup Delve "Delve built a machine designed to make clients complicit without their knowledge, to manufacture plausible deniability while producing exactly the opposite." substack.com/home/post/p-19…
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2026 is the year everyone becomes a founder.
We rebuilt Founders, Inc. for that world.
Hubert Thieblot@hthieblot
In 2026, I’m inviting 1,000 founders to San Francisco to start their companies. Are you in?
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@DeepInsightLabs Ask the barista when you visit to see if Trudy can come down to say hello.
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Corgi, a YC company, built it.
Introducing Corgi Cafe at 9 Claude Lane.
We're open 24/7. Never closing
Yuchen Jin@Yuchenj_UW
Guys, SF is a magical city. Today, a beautiful Wednesday, I had a 4:30pm meeting with a friend at a café… it was closed. We walked 10 blocks, every café was closed. Finally found Blue Bottle, it closed at 5:30. Can some YC company please build what SF people actually want?
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@boardyai Yeah, 100%. So many of their young associates are defecting to startups...many funds are already dead. There is a consolidation of investments in the big, "safe" names.
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@GJarrosson Who's buying a $1M biz at ARR multiples instead of cashflow?
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AI creates two paths that didn't exist before:
𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝟭: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘆𝗹𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗻. You build to $1-2M ARR solo, stay profitable, never raise again. You have the option to sell at 5-10x ARR to a strategic whenever you want. That's a $5-20M exit you control entirely. You own 100%. That's generational wealth without a single pitch deck.
𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝟮: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘇. You build to $1-2M ARR solo, then raise $10-20M and hire 50 people in 6 months. You have more leverage than any seed-stage founder in history because you already proved you can build and sell. You're not raising to find PMF. You're raising to buy speed.
The middle path (raise $3M, hire 10 people, grind for 3 years) might be dead. You either own the outcome or you raise enough to dominate.
For investors… if a founder is at $1M ARR solo and raising $3M, ask why.
If they're raising $15M, ask if they can actually deploy it in 18 months.
The delta between those two questions is the entire investment decision.
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@mercebent That their "pattern matching" is alpha. In reality just playing it safe...
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The Lies VCs tell themselves:
+ "I didn't really try that hard" or "We dodged a bullet".....(but you missed the fastest growing unicorn).
+ "I know they acted strangely, but this founder is still the right one"......(and then exec team quits).
+ "This company just needs $1.5M more of an extension and they'll unlock growth".....(but they've stagnated)
+ "This company will return $500M to the fund".....(but hasn't been marked up in years).
what else?
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@brickywhat Like seriously....was there ever a time when it wasn't a negative signal? Talking about VCs with no operating experience.
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Guys, SF is a magical city.
Today, a beautiful Wednesday, I had a 4:30pm meeting with a friend at a café… it was closed.
We walked 10 blocks, every café was closed. Finally found Blue Bottle, it closed at 5:30.
Can some YC company please build what SF people actually want?
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@hthieblot I think there's something really wrong if a team goes 4 years without traction actually.
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One of the loneliest and most brutal stretches as a founder is holding unbreakable belief that you'll make it... when you have literally nothing to show for it.
2–4 years of:
- Zero traction
- Telling people "this is going to be big" and feeling like a fraud the second the words leave your mouth
- Shrinking bank account
- Friends buying houses / getting promotions while you explain to your mom why you still don't have a "real job"
The imposter voice gets loudest at 3 AM:
"Am I delusional?"
"Can I actually pull this off?"
"Am I really built for this?"
Everyone around you might doubt it quietly, but the real killer is when you start doubting yourself.
The truth: Yes, you can. Yes, you are that guy.
But belief has to come before proof.
You have to choose to back yourself hard when the scoreboard says zero, because that's exactly when most people quit.
Those empty years aren't wasted.
They're forging the version of you that can handle the win when it finally hits.
Keep showing up.
Stay obsessed.
Never ever give up.
The breakthrough comes after the doubt has tried to kill you a hundred times.
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@charu1603 @FenrockAI 50% of the time it works every time!
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@morganlinton Bullish on that, and that traditional ML and NLP pipelines may even make a bit of a comeback. Too many inefficient/degenerate usage of LLMs in many new startups. No wonder, margins are thin or non-existent.
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@StephNass Why do investors do this? Don't they realize they are destroying value of their investments too?
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I got access to the most predatory accelerator contract ever 💀
If you're considering an incubator or accelerator, read this carefully:
These terms will destroy your cap table and kill your ability to raise.
Here's what's in the contract:
1️⃣ Dilutable equity: 3% upfront
The accelerator gets 3% of your company the moment you sign.
Not when they deliver results. Not when you raise capital. Just for signing.
🚩 Why this is bad: You're giving away equity before they've done anything. Legitimate accelerators invest cash. This is an absolute joke.
→ Never give equity upfront without cash or guaranteed results.
2️⃣ Commission on funds raised: 5% of all capital raised
If you raise $1M through their intros, they take $50k. That's on top of the 3% equity they already own!
🚩 Why this is bad: You're paying them twice. Once in equity, once in cash.
→ Legitimate accelerators don't charge a success fee on the raise. These people are actually acting as an investment bank that ALSO takes 3% equity.
3️⃣ $50,000 penalty if you terminate the agreement
If you want out of this deal, you pay $50,000. Even if they've made zero intros and delivered zero value.
🚩 Why this is bad: This is a trap. Legitimate accelerators don't hold founders hostage.
→ If the relationship isn't working, you should be able to leave without financial penalties.
In exchange for all of this, here's what they promise:
· Cold email 15,000 investors
· Make 0 to 4 investor intros
· Zero obligation of success
No guaranteed intros and no committed capital.
Just your equity, your cash, and a $50k trap if you try to leave.
This is a scam. Don't sign.
Share this to warn other founders.
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@hthieblot This may seem a bit weird, but I wanna build StackOverflow for coding agents.
I don't normally attend hackathons, but I spent my last 2 weeks in SF bouncing this idea off people, and I think it has merits.
turingwell.net
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Looking for obsessed builders.
I invest up to $250K first checks in:
• Robotics, drones, space
• Applied AI/ML, models
• Dev tools and infra
• Manufacturing & logistics, and more...
DMs open or just reply here what you are building.
Early > polished.
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@nur_daulet_ I read it as "staying at the client's house and fucking until they agree" and was like 😮
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