Robotics will Reward the Boring and Dangerous We are about to witness the steady flow of robotics into our everyday lives. This presents a huge opportunity for founders interested in solving boring or dangerous problems. 1. It’s already here. Self driving car services like Waymo and food delivery robots like Serve were the first mainstream products. Plus over 19k humanoid robots have already been sold this year. The wave is coming. 2. Use cases. Robotics can help humans across literally millions of use cases from the boring to the outright dangerous, from emptying the dishwasher to fixing underwater communication cables. 3. Intelligence commoditized. If commercial and open source models can offer roughly similar performance, that makes physical AI a huge opportunity for new founders - you get the superintelligence part for free!

The AI Security Apocalypse Is Here This week brought the news that PHP, the most used programming language on the web, has urgent security loopholes that AI can now easily discover and exploit. And this has been happening for a while, with AI-enabled breaches up 56% year over year. Ultimately, AI makes anyone a potential hacker if they choose to be one. The PHP bugs also provided a frightening preview of how our species will behave during these times - badly. The security embargo on these exploits failed: Amazon detected an attempt four days before the disclosure and Cloudflare saw thousands of attempts in the hours leading up to the public announcement. If we can't rely on the security community's infrastructure, we're on our own. So what can you do? The baseline is an industry-leading password manager like 1Password, with a minimum of two-factor authentication but ideally passkeys. You need to be fastidious about software updates across the board, on all devices used by your family and any servers you control. If you run websites and apps, you should have your coding agents conduct regular security reviews and use alternative models to perform 'adversarial' reviews. I also recommend using a 'skill' like gstack's CSO review on a weekly basis to stay on top of potential risks. And if you're running an agent, you can also have it regularly check the news for hacking risks against your software stack. The world's cybersecurity landscape is changing rapidly and it doesn't seem like anyone is coming to save us. Protection from AI is your own responsibility. "I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization" - Agent Smith, The Matrix (1999).

How to Make a Great Startup Demo I review dozens of demos a week. Most mistakes fall into three buckets: 1. Too long. You have about 30 seconds. 2. Live instead of video. Bugs happen. 3. Too complicated. Anyone should understand it.

(Periodic Reminder) We invest up to $150k at the idea stage. We’re often the first check and usually decide in the first meeting. We’re looking for hard tech founders who want to build for the US market. And you don’t need an introduction, you can apply on the website and it reaches me directly.

Oftentimes, the easiest way to grow is to reduce your customer churn.

I spent the last 7 days in 4 different states and: - United and Delta both have terrible wifi. - Lots of folks are bragging about *not* using AI. - SF has the best food in the country but I do love the cured meats in NYC.

AI slop has ruined a lot of outreach, so you really can’t use it to write your messages to potential customers. They will simply ignore you. But you can use AI for *everything* else, from research to profiling and network mapping.

This is unacceptable behavior. I have moved my @Starlink subscription to standby mode until this stuff stops. I love the service but I can’t be a part of this.

Thank you, NYC 🗽 We will be back soon!

Investors: have you ever fought a founder to keep your pro rata? I've seen this play out many times. I'm still waiting to hear from anyone who thought it was worth it.

If you want a tool, I don’t need you to justify why you need it. But I will have high expectations for your output. If you don’t hit the goals, there might be consequences. Listen to the full episode of The Startup Help Desk anywhere you get your podcasts.

AI makes it easier to move quickly, but that does not mean you can trust the output. Deliberately over-invest in testing and QA. Coincidentally, this is also the path to building a fully automated pipeline.

It’s been an absolute pleasure working with the @lightsprintai team since the very beginning.

Thank you to everyone who came out for @ycombinator alumni feedback night in New York yesterday. It was a great time and there were some big ideas. More NYC events to come!

Self-serve will not save you from having to talk to your customers.

Big thanks to @greybaker and the @ycombinator team for hosting startups from @imperialcollege London last week. Complete with the obligatory @Waymo ride!

Don’t build based on your hypothesis and assumptions alone. I usually suggest 200 potential customer conversations to confirm you’re building something people want.

Another great @GBxGlobal Gala in the books. Thanks to @MarkCharkin and the entire team for making it happen!

The golden age of gaming may just be upon us. Cross platform, multiplayer, and the most fun games of the last 20 years.