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AI First with Adam and Andy: Inspiring Business Leaders to Make AI First Moves is a dynamic podcast focused on the unprecedented potential of AI and how business leaders can harness it to transform their companies. Each episode dives into real-world examples of AI deployments, the "holy shit" moments where AI changes everything, and the steps leaders need to take to stay ahead. It’s bold, actionable, and emphasizes the exponential acceleration of AI, inspiring CEOs to make AI-first moves before they fall behind.
Andy Sack (00:00)
This is AI First with Adam and Andy, the show about what happens when AI stops being a tool and starts becoming part of your workforce. I'm Andy Sack, and alongside my co-host Adam Brotman, each episode we talk with business leaders on the front lines of the agentic era. What's working, what's failing.
And how AI is changing the way companies operate. No hype, just real-world lessons and ideas you can put to work.
We recently hosted a LinkedIn live session with Greg Gottesman and Alex Ray of Pioneer Square Labs about AI-powered solopreneurship. We'll link to that conversation in the show notes. One number that came up during that episode that stuck with us is that Pioneer Square Labs.
Say they're on track to evaluate four hundred to five hundred ideas per year.
Compared to with about a hundred just two years ago,
So rather than recap the live, we want to ask a bigger question.
What happens inside a company when the cost of iteration, of trying, learning, killing an idea drops
dramatically? like to have Rose, our colleague, join us to explore this topic. Rose, take it away.
Rose Kelly (01:08)
Hi
guys, excited to be back here with you guys. I thought it was a really interesting LinkedIn live, so I hope that people go and see the recording. But I was really taken by something Adam, you said, and you kind of pointed out that and highlighted. is that it's not necessarily that it's you know, like with AI, it's getting better at picking the winners and that they're able to do that. It's more that they're able to experiment so much more. And they're able to really test and as he said, kill ideas.
much more quickly at a 4x kind of increase. what do you have to say about that? What was your reaction when they were telling you about that? And how did it make you think about what that means for other companies?
Adam Brotman (01:42)
I mean in this the whole subject of you know solopreneurship and you know how much you can get done with AI now on your own as an individual or a small team, same idea. Cause I mean, let's be honest, most of AI use is single player mode. And it's like you and your agent, you and your AI chatbot or whatever, and so when he said that.
you know, that he can get five hundred percent more experiments done. And in their world, in this particular case on this conversation we're having with this one.
Andy Sack (02:12)
What Adam,
just to correct you, it wasn't five hundred percent, it was four hundred to five hundred ideas they were able to iterate through and basically kill.
Adam Brotman (02:20)
Yeah, but it was but it was
four to five X what they were able to do in the previous year or two. So I'm so sorry, I
Andy Sack (02:25)
Yeah, compared to a hundred. You're right. Yeah, four okay, your math, yeah.
Adam Brotman (02:28)
sorry, I was do you're right. you're exactly right. Coincidentally, it was
Andy Sack (02:31)
It's the same.
Adam Brotman (02:32)
the same. Yeah, but you're right that I was thinking of it as like a four to five hundred percent increase. And you know, we live in a world where we're like, my god, like if you use AI, you will be able to do a hundred percent more than you could do without AI.
What's interesting is they were sort of talking about a different angle on that. They were talking about like AI is progressing now and is becoming so agentic both that they're able to do four or five times as much work essentially as they were able to do a year or two ago when they were still using AI. So it was it was AI to AI. Like AI is impr and and by the way, like when I what I thought about was like.
In their world, they I think it was experiments they do. That's what they actually do. I think their company, part of what they do is they do a lot of experiments and they decide which ones work and which ones don't. Like that's literally what they do. even though it's just a good practice. And I was struck by like, wow, that's a lot of experiments. That's a lot of work. And I'm not surprised that they can do that much more. But then I mentioned on the show, but I actually wondered.
Yeah, but okay, so it doesn't work and then like what are you testing the new model and the new system that comes out to see if something did work? I mean, I know that's not how they're thinking about it 'cause they want to just like learn, iterate, move forward.
Rose Kelly (03:43)
That is a really good point. Yeah, like if they're gonna revisit those ideas next year. Like, you know, if they didn't work this year, does that make sense? And like how do they decide that too?
Adam Brotman (03:51)
Yeah, and it brings up and I'd love to get Andy's take on this, because it does bring up like just because you can do more, that can actually be a really impactful material thing to whatever you're doing. Cause I can do more output. And a lot of times that does make a difference, like in your job, and you can get more done. You don't need to hire somebody, slash you can do twice as many things or whatever. But sometimes like more is not better. so Andy, what do you think?
That was what struck me when he said it. I like, my God, they can do so much more but is that in their case it might be better 'cause they're playing a numbers game, but like
I
Andy Sack (04:20)
Yeah, so I
I mean it's interesting. I have a number of things to say about this. One is that, and they didn't really we didn't cover this in the episode, but I know this having spoken to them multiple times over the past year, is that I think in the case of a one person company, more is usually more iterations, more failure actually is better.
What you're looking for is some niche where you can get low cost distribution as a startup. Because as a low as a startup, you just don't have it to start. And really, and Greg said this, his learning was cost effective distribution's really hard. So I know for a fact they started, let's do a t-shirt business. can we do a one-person t-shirt business? And they could. And
But then you get into t-shirt business and it's like, well, like how differentiated that and how big of a business is it? And so they started with the idea of e-commerce. They started with t-shirts. And then the next thing they knew, they were like, we need more margin and more differentiation. And they got into like these $600, basically like facial cleaners,
That women use, apparently. and you know, it helps massage the skin, and people are spending $600, $700 on these specialty face cleaners. Very different than t-shirts, right? And it took them a bunch of iterations to get there. I think they tried that and that. Was a more much more niche business. There was more margin to play with, it was differentiated. But like getting that business to scale, I think was hard. And so.
I think like, I don't think if they tried that again next year, it probably wouldn't be this you know, what's trendy shopping wise, et cetera. so more tests and more failure is good. It means that pivoting is like happening all the time. like you're going fast through the train. But, you know, what had Medvi get
you know, a couple of hundred million dollars in a month was because they were selling GLP one and they were just good at marketing. So their selection of what they were doing was better. You know, it's very similar to what we talk about in our book, Adam. It's like where you aim the agentic machine and at root,
Adam Brotman (06:26)
Yeah.
Andy Sack (06:27)
you need a differentiated business. And I think we got to that with Greg and with Alex today, or recently,
Not that you need differentiation, cost-effective distribution, and it generally is not a solopreneur business to pull these things off, you actually need small teams.
Adam Brotman (06:45)
I will I'm gonna just add one thing real quick. Cause Andy, I think you nailed it, like the aim point you just made. Because what I was thinking is at the abstract and kind of higher level, the bigger point is just AI now, and this is true in the last six months. It wasn't true really before that. AI now like
You know, it can kind of do a lot for not a lot of money. I know there's all this worry about token costs, but the token costs are like coming down. It can just like get it done. It doesn't make as many mistakes. it's highly autonomous. So like be careful where you aim it. It'll do a lot. so I if I was giving practical advice to somebody, I'd say, a solopreneur or not, I'd be like,
Find a thing where lots of reps or lots of variations is actually gonna be for sure like gonna help you accomplish whatever. And like if you know that, great. Like AI, then like turn that machine on and let it just go burr, right? Like go. but if you're like, you know, this is gonna sound like a Bill Gates thing to say, but like, you know, you don't want like 50 strategic plans, you know what I mean? And the crazy thing is AI can build.
50 marketing plans and 50 strategic plans and 50 financial models for you. Like that doesn't help you. But it could actually do it. Like you could like tell your agent, like, go build me 50 of these things. And then when I wake up tomorrow morning, I want 50 different versions. Like, that doesn't help you. But if it's like, I want 50 different versions of creative that I want you to build, then I want you to go ahead and autonomously go buy ads for them and show me which ones performed better. And I don't have to do anything,
Let my agents do that. That's a good example of aiming it. Like so it is like a thing you gotta be careful about, you know, where you aim it. so more is not always better. I think in the case of the conversation we were just having though, and that startup their business was, I want lots of reps, lots of experiments, and then I'm gonna figure out which ones work and which ones don't, and I'm gonna iterate my way there. So that was actually really cool. He was kind of bragging and deserved to brag about like, we can do like four or five hundred of these things now when we can only do like a hundred of them a couple of years ago.
Like that's game changing.
Rose Kelly (08:37)
Yeah, that's a good point. That's the nature of their business. They are incubating new ideas and companies, and that is what they've always done. One thing I wanted to like kind of circle back on, you guys touched on a little bit, is that this idea of
Yes, the cost of experimentation and like the speed that you can do that has, you know, gotten a lot cheaper. But I think they talked about, like, you know, Andy, you mentioned it's like distribution is still difficult. And there are certain parts of it that are still gonna be genuinely scarce. And so what do you think about those two things? Like what are the things that like in Adam? You started talking about it, but like what are the things that have gotten a lot easier? So it's that experimentation, it's that iterating, it's that getting 200 pieces of
creative
that you can go and test. And then what is the piece that, you know, are still scarce?
But
things that still take time that are more difficult. I don't know, Andy, Adam, which one do you want to take it?
Andy Sack (09:22)
I mean, two things that it's gotten more difficult to get attention. As a startup, nobody gives a shit about who you are or what you dug. So, so getting an audience in your first 10, 100 customers is harder than it was two years ago. And and it's getting harder even because just the
Content is going up and to the right, software is going up and to the right, the number of one person companies is going up and to the right. And so all of that stuff, everyone is overloaded and overwhelmed as a customer. And it's like, what do I pay attention to? And people rely on their trusted sources of filtering in the world. So I think that's the number one, like in essence, it's increasingly
AI has made the attention economy even more fierce than it was to you two to three years ago.
Rose Kelly (10:10)
Adam, anything to add?
Adam Brotman (10:11)
You know, it's such a hard question to answer about like where can you set it up and let it go? And where do you need to be paying more attention right now? I would say that when you asked the question, Rose, what came to mind was like
And we've talked about this you and I Rose on some of our boot camp practice and stuff and services practice at Forum3, which is that if somebody's system is like already plumbed in a way, and I don't mean like hard plumbing, I mean easy plumbing, but as in connectors, like you know, God, if I just connector to my email and this SaaS program and I gave this agent this direction, it can just go.
And I don't have to like worry about anything until it comes back with whatever. And then there's other examples where it's like it doesn't work that like that. You have to you're having to be in there sort of figuring out what are the ingredients, right? So not to mix metaphors between plumbing and cooking, but like it is about like getting the right ingredients or getting the plumbing set up right. and then you can sort of step back more as a human. But I think a lot of the human job is doing that. It's like steering it to like, wait.
Like these are the pieces that need to connect, I'm pretty sure. And I think sometimes you don't know. So, like, I mean, I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about, but this stuff is moving so fast that I call Andy, you Rose, I call you guys all the time. And I'm like, check this out. Like now Claude can do this or my Grokbot can do that. And like it just did it. And it didn't do that.
three months ago. and that takes pressure off of me as a human because I used to have to like be in the middle of that and I don't have to be in the middle anymore. So it's a hard question to answer 'cause it's a moving target.
Rose Kelly (11:39)
No, it is. Okay, I'm gonna ask you one last question before we wrap. what is like the one takeaway or the one piece of advice you would have for a larger company based on kind of the conversations from that LinkedIn Live and what you heard from Alex and Greg? And like what do you think that would be applicable and that you'd want them to be taking back to their own businesses?
Andy Sack (11:57)
I think we say this in our book, so with the trend of solopreneurship, what I said before, which is the rise in content, the rise in copying and coding, the rise in competition, inaction is the worst thing that you can do. So,
Embrace iteration, embrace, I guess, some of the risk of trying, of iterating and failing. Embrace the failure, which is just it's really tough in corporate America. And even further, the other thing that's tough is everyone's like, what's the ROI? What's the ROI? What's the ROI? and you know, I would just say
for sure your most negative ROI is in action. That's what I would take away.
Adam Brotman (12:37)
I think that's a great comment, Andy, because lot of people have inaction around AI because they think that they need everything to be perfect. They need their data to be perfect, they need to be able to like, well, that won't work at scale. Remember, we talked recently about the idea of the difference between how you know using AI to create something that's for prototyping versus for scale, production, grade scale.
We get this comment all the time, like I just said, about data. And Andy, you're nailing it. the biggest thing I would take away if I'm a solopreneur or at a company, either one, is like, I need to just go and start using this stuff and I need to just start building some stuff with it. And stop trying to make it about like I have to have it all figured out. We don't have it figured out. And I'm not trying to hold us up like if we don't have it figured out, then that's the standard, but like we don't have it figured out. like nobody has it completely figured out.
And in fact, the people that are the most proficient at AI, they're the ones that are like on X or Twitter and on Instagram and on YouTube, just like in TikTok, looking at what are other people doing with this? And like what are the use cases and like what's possible? and then when you see that, it's not good enough to see it. You gotta do it. So to Andy's point, it's like speed, it's rolling up your shirt sleeves and stop trying to make everything so perfect.
before you understand what's possible. Once you understand what's possible, then you can figure out like how do you scale it and you know how much is it really gonna cost and all that stuff. But I think people get tripped up by that and then they don't take advantage of being, you know, sort of AI native about the way they're thinking about
Rose Kelly (13:59)
Yeah, no, I like that. It's interesting also to think about it with the bigger companies, the issue they maybe have struggled with is the ideas, is the like, what do we do next? they actually have sometimes the customers, they have distribution for their existing things. And so it's actually a huge opportunity. the rethink that like how do you go quicker? How do you just experiment? How do you get back to the startup roots? so yeah, I love that. Thank you guys for sharing more on that. It's always nice to recap after we have some of those events. Andy, you want to wrap
Wrap things up?
Andy Sack (14:26)
Yeah. thank you to all of you for listening to AI First with Adam and Andy. For more on how to build and run a company in the agentic era, go to forum3.com. You'll find practical resources for leading with AI. Sign up for our free weekly workshops and find links to our book, Agents Inc. How to Rebuild Your Company in the Age of AI. We truly believe you can't overinvest in your AI learning. Onward.