AI war path
Source: The Gentle Singularity - Sam Altman
AI-native everything within 2 years. Not AI-enhanced, but fundamental infrastructure redesign across every industry. And what comes with that? Career disruption. Traditional job categories and career paths are about to be scrambled. Will it be enough to just ‘learn AI tools’? Is it time to future-proof? What does that even look like?
I think Sam’s blog post was fantastic. I especially liked the tone - it’s optimistic. Instead of ‘you will lose your job and go broke’ he chose ‘you will lose your job and enjoy leisure activities.’ However, as the head of OpenAI, maybe it’s HIS job to tell us that. While AI (starting with automation) will inevitably change the job landscape, so many new jobs will be created. I think we’ll look back at this time and thank progress that future jobs will rely more heavily on things that make us human - creativity, inspiration, exploration, emotions.
‘We’re pre-revenue’
Source: pre-traction - Maria Heyen (Redbud)
Willingness to pay. No new ideas here, but I’m glad to be reminded. Investors care more about validated customer pain than perfect product metrics. I’ve tried building in isolation. It’s cool but it’s not that cool.
Founder-market fit is becoming the new product-market fit. Without domain expertise, founders need either a proven track record or exceptional early traction. AI enables builders to move too quickly, and most products are repeatable. I think I’ve learned this the hard way. But I also think I needed to learn this the hard way. Good luck.
Cursor’s scaling architecture
Source: Real-world engineering challenges: building Cursor - Pragmatic Engineer
A good reminder that the best technical solution is often the one that gets you to market the fastest, not the most elegant. This is a great read for any engineer building 0 to 1. I will be stealing multiple ideas from this.
Other commentary
Most systems will eventually become AI-native. So much of our life will become automated. Progress is supercharged.
Timeline compression is everywhere.
Human judgment becomes more valuable.