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The "No BS" version of how startups are really built, taught by actual startup Founders who have lived through all of it. Hosts Wil Schroter and Ryan Rutan talk candidly about the intense struggles Founders face both personally and professionally as they try to turn their idea into something that will change the world.
Welcome back to the episode of
the Startup Therapy Podcast.
This is Ryan Rutan
joint, as always by my
friend, the founder,
and CEO of startups.com.
Will Schroeder, will AI
is now writing our copy,
debugging our code, AB testing
our pricing while we sleep,
to the extent that we do.
So the existential questions
getting pretty loud and clear.
If the smartest person in
the room now costs 49 bucks a
month, what's left for founders?
So I think, man, it'd be fun
today to break down like what
parts of us get automated
and which parts become
more valuable than ever.
The
question a lot of people
are saying is, can
AI replace a founder?
Yeah.
And, and I, I'm gonna be
heretical when I say this.
Yes.
Now I say that as a founder,
as somebody who does not
want to be replaced, right?
Yeah.
So I wanna be clearly, I, I
have a strong bias to say,
no, this is where we fight
back against Skynet will.
It kind of is, we
know how this goes.
It doesn't end well for us.
Although we do get a
a, a cool Austrian sent
back to it to help us.
You sure do.
So here, here's
what I would say.
When I say yes, I don't mean,
uh, universally all of us,
I'm saying Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of, I think what
historically I considered
my founder traits.
Um, my ability to work
really hard on all these
different things, those things
just aren't hard anymore.
Right.
Like, I'll give you an example.
I've prided myself for
a very long time on
being a strong writer.
You've seen me write unlimited
amounts of copy, right?
Yep.
And it was like we could just
take any topic, uh, whether
it's landing page copy, or
educational copy, or your
newsletters, and you're
like, we'll, write something.
And I would just, right?
Yep.
And, and like I said in,
and my writing was decent
and it was passable.
Yeah.
But now.
AI can write as well, if
not better than I can.
And it's almost like that skill.
Okay.
This is just one example
kind of went away.
Now the, the importance
of having something to say
has not gone away here.
Right, right.
What you're trying, trying
to say part very much
I.
But your ability to convey
that in words is no longer a
unique skill that some people
have and some people don't.
Some people, of course,
are gonna be better at it,
but no, if, if chat GBT
can crank out 50 landing
page variants before lunch,
then we can't treat the
copywriting piece as the
founder superpower, right?
Knowing what to say, important.
Saying it less.
So I wanna dig into that
just a little bit more.
'cause I, this is just so
fascinating to me that this
whole, this whole era right
now is so fascinating to me.
Right now we're at a point
where AI, and, and I, I would
argue, I always use the,
the corollary to, uh, gaming
machines from Atari 2,600 Yeah.
To like, you know, uh,
current Xbox, so to speak.
And I, and I would say AI is
still in roughly somewhere
between the Atari 2,600 and
the in television stage, right.
Just like the Right,
the very early stages.
And at the time people
never see it that way.
Like, like when you had your
Atari 2,600, you thought it
was the most amazing gaming
system that it e ever existed.
Well, it was because
it was right.
'cause right before that I
had pong, and right before
that I had just tic-tac
toe on a piece of paper.
You bet, you bet.
So I say this to say
there are many, many, um,
iterations that are coming,
but even in the current
iteration, at the most basic.
What AI can do now, it makes
a lot of the stuff we were
spending so much time doing.
Kind of irrelevant or at worse.
Yeah, man.
Duplicative.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anything that's repeatable,
data-driven, pattern based.
To me, man, that's
already AI turf.
Right.
And as you said, we're just
at the beginning stages.
And
here's another
way to look at it.
I used to run a large
ad agency, right?
Yeah.
And we had hundreds and hundreds
of people, uh, copywriters
and creative directors.
Yeah.
You know, and all
these folks, right.
And the copywriters, for
example, of which I had
a, a strong affinity for,
would be able to sit in a
room and we'd be working on
a campaign, and they'd come
up with dozens and dozens of
different ideas and approaches.
Right now, within that
contingent of copywriters.
Like anything else,
like athletes or
anything else like that?
There were a few that
were exceptional.
Let's say the A players.
Yep.
And there were a handful that
were B players and a lot of
people that were C players.
Okay.
Yeah.
Now what I would argue is
most AI can perform about
as well as the B players and
most certainly the C players.
Yes.
Yeah, I agree.
Are they replicating
the A players?
No.
And they, they may never.
May never.
Okay.
However, that's here nor there.
The point is, if I can now
have copywriting and and idea
generation done at a B level.
Yeah, for $0 for
$49 a month, right?
Yep.
Why wouldn't I
be doing that?
Exactly.
No.
The accelerative power,
that is insanity.
Right?
And this is, this is what
we should all want, right?
This is what we all want.
Correct.
We've always wanted this.
We're like, how could I just
get them to produce way more?
Right?
I can only afford one person.
How can I turn them into 10?
Here's your answer.
And again,
we're focusing this episode
inward to say, and what if I
wanna be the force multiplier?
Here's a, a great way for me
to, to, to show the difference.
Uh, a few years ago when I was
writing copy for something,
I kind of knew what my rate
of output would be, and I
knew that, let's say I'm
just making this up on, in
any one day, I could create,
uh, you know, a five page
document, just, you know,
using it as a unit of measure.
Okay, well now in a day I can
create 10, five page documents.
Yes.
Right.
So because the AI can basically
take the ideas from my head
and just put all the words
that was like me manually lay
laying bricks before, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And I just don't
have to do that.
No.
So part of me would say, man,
that felt very special to me.
You know, I felt very unique
that I had that capability.
Uh, and, and, and that's been
quote taken away from me,
but there's another side to
say, but was that really was
my ability to, to, to write
words and compose the value?
Or was it the idea
behind those words?
Yeah, I mean that
was the thought.
The always was the idea.
We just didn't have
another way of manifesting
the idea in the past.
Right.
There was have idea.
Now put it to paper.
Right.
We just don't have to do all
of the manual work for that.
It's funny, man.
I had this realization the
other day that there are tasks
that I think once were like
the signals of my genius, that
now would just be a signal that
I lost my open AI password.
Like nothing else.
Like if you see me doing
them, you're like, wait,
where I did the power off?
Like what are you doing?
And again, like to your point,
like things that used to seem
really, really important to me,
like digging through analytics
and pattern spotting, right?
Right.
Seeing things other
people couldn't see.
I'm good at that.
Yeah.
I'm nowhere near as good at
that as a machine that can
crunch through millions of
records of data in minutes.
Um, just not, so
I think this is the
first building block
of this conversation.
I think let's first explore
what should be replaceable.
Right.
So I know everyone has this,
this I immediate reaction
and it's visceral to say,
I can't be replaced by
machine, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, dude, you can, right?
Yeah.
And you will be.
So let's talk about
why you should be and
what you do about it.
Right.
Sure.
Not just like this, this
natural tendency to just push
back and just be like angry
about it that buys you nothing.
Yep.
And there is a very, very,
very long list of tombstones
of people that had exactly
that reaction and didn't
work out well, particularly
in the business world.
So again, Ryan, when you
think about things that are
replaceable, that should
be replaceable, that like,
while, like you just mentioned
analytics, that a moment
ago you were like, Hey,
this is what I got paid to
do, and now it's like it's
a $49 a month, uh, problem.
Yep.
What else comes to mind?
It's the, the
time consuming part of it.
You can just look at it
from a, a pure time calculus
perspective, like, and replace
the things that are gonna
take you the most time and
still, like, they're valuable.
They, they need to be
done, but they don't
need to be done by you.
You know, as we were coming
into this episode today, will,
I was, I was thinking about
the process you've gone through
with building the house.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And it occurred to me like, you
know, you at the beginning, like
you could have treated yourself
as the architect, the GC.
The plumber, the electrician,
the framing guys.
Right.
All of it.
Right.
You could've just done all
of it and you've done, you've
done a lot of stuff, but at
some point, like it makes
a lot more sense for you to
hire a GC and a plumber and
electrician and all of that.
Right?
Right.
Well, I think that, you know,
we were once as founders,
we were once the architect,
GC plumber, all of it.
Like we just had
to do everything.
We got so used to, especially
at the time you and I
came up through this.
Yeah.
We had to do everything.
There wasn't anybody
else to do it.
You really did.
Yep.
There weren't tools to do stuff.
We did a little
of everything now.
AI steps in as the GC and
AI just hired the plumber.
Yep.
Now you can just stay in
the architect's chair.
Right.
That's the way I see it.
So what, what I'm looking at
is like, how can I just stay
a above that kind of messy
work layer in a way that
doesn't keep me uninformed,
but doesn't have me overworked
in the sense that like I could
be doing more valuable stuff.
So instead of having
to crunch all the
analytics like I used to.
I can get the insight from
that and I can spend more
time deciding what to do
based on that insight.
Right, right, right.
So the, the, the base level
analysis, all of those kind
of things just going away,
anything that requires like
mass creation or mass ingestion
and kind of normalizing of
information just gonna go away.
Right.
So at the marketing level,
looking at across, like, you
know, if we're honest with
ourselves, we talk about AB
testing and, and you know,
optimization and all this
stuff that we, that we do.
Yet, it's sort of done on kind
of like a rolling window basis.
Mm-hmm.
Do I look all the way back
to the very first experiments
I ran on Facebook ever.
When I'm, yeah.
When I'm running, running
the ones now, yeah.
I can't, I can't
look at 6,000 ads.
AI can, so now it allows me
to do these things better.
And it was never about
the analysis before.
It was about getting
to the answer and then
acting on the answer.
Right.
And I still think that
the acting on the answer
piece is still very much.
In founder camp.
We'll see for how long?
I
think a big part of where the
pushback is, is there's an
overwhelming focus, justifiably
so right now around what
AI is taking away from us.
There's not enough of the
conversation, and I think the
smart founders are already
pointing this direction around
what it is enabling us to do.
Not that nobody's ever
mentioned what, what AI can do.
Yeah.
What I'm saying is as
founders, as founders,
there has to be a version
of us that says, dude, like.
I'm about to be Superman.
Right.
Yeah.
Like for example, when I
was first starting in my
career, I didn't understand
anything about finance.
I mean, not even a little bit.
And as you know, I've been a
startup CFO for 25 years in
addition to my, my day job.
And it's not because I'm
a financial wizard, it's
because as soon as you put
dollar signs in front of
those numbers and you said,
Hey, that's your money.
Yeah.
All of a sudden I was like the,
the rainman of finance, right?
Like I was just like,
I, I understood it.
All right?
The matrix, it all made sense.
But think of how under.
Armed.
I was at that time, right?
He here, here's how I
figured out finance.
I drove to Barnes and Noble.
I found a book that was probably
published 15 years prior
on small business finance.
And I read it cover to cover,
which took days, right?
Yes.
And it was the driest,
most boring book ever.
However, changed my life.
But think of all the things
that that had to happen in
order for me to be able to
do this one simple thing,
which was put together an
income statement, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now I can do that like a
seasoned pro without even
knowing how to do it.
I just, I have to go back to
this anecdote where, where
you talked about, where you
were asked for the income
statement and you, you pulled
out the, uh, you pulled the
piece of paper outta your
pocket that just had like the
monthly, like the things you
had spent money on that month
and like showed the investor.
I love that man.
This, that was, that was,
this is the moment where
that education became
obvious and necessary
to you.
That would've been really
useful at that time.
Hey, what's your pro
forma income statement?
My, my what?
My what?
My, um, here's a list
of things I'm gonna
buy at the store later.
That the team, yes.
I literally gave a, a word
document of, of how much I
owed my roommate that month.
Yeah.
But again, you know,
plan it out a little bit.
So we keep talking
about the things that's
taking away from us.
But when I say, you know, some
of these traits, you know,
are replaceable, I'm saying
not only are they replaceable,
we should lean into that.
Yeah, right.
A hundred percent.
My first reaction being AI
is taking away my uniqueness
of being a copywriter.
Okay, got it.
Okay.
But how can AI also make
me 10 x the copywriter?
Right.
Yeah.
If, if, if I have so much
to say, how can I say it
exponentially faster, more
efficiently, et cetera.
Like, I've got an AI that's
trained on my voice so I can
tell it anything I want and
it will respond in my voice.
Now I don't love it.
Right.
I don't love it.
So, so like, uh, when I used
a brainstorm stuff, it'll come
back in my voice, but it's, as
you know, AI has a smell to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So,
so it's always like
the, the kind of.
AI version of my voice.
Yeah,
it's 80%, but it ain't
a hundred percent.
You mean auditory voice?
You're not saying write
something in your voice
and tone, you mean?
Oh yeah.
Your actual voice point.
Good point.
Actually, the auditory
voice is spot on.
No, in this case, I mean the,
uh, the, the, the writing
and, and I gotta say, man,
uh, what I get back if I
published it as is, no one
would know the difference.
I'm the only person that can
tell the difference in this
case, but I can tell anyway.
Maybe you just don't like
your writing will maybe that
I, I I always used to make the
joke that if we ever come up
with an AI that can replicate
yourself, that will be the
most hated person of all time.
Oh, yeah.
Or, or AI hang out with
yourself all day long.
Oh, how about this?
God.
An AI that is purely based
on your search history.
Yes.
That person, the worst
human of all time.
Oh God, I hate that person.
Anyway, I think that again,
we're having that first initial
reaction that says, you know,
AI pad, blah, blah, blah.
Um, we might wanna
look at it going.
Should you have had to know
all of finance in order
to advance your business.
Yep.
And there's gonna be some
argument where someone says Yes,
but that knowledge and what you
went through Uhhuh, you know,
taught you to do X, Y, Z, and,
and there's some truth to that.
Sure.
But dude, that is a really
painful, hard way to me,
like 10 years to do it.
Right.
I needed that information
day one, not 10
years from now.
This is here, here's,
this is a big question.
I don't think anybody can
answer this just yet, but
one of the questions is.
How will this be different for
people who didn't come up, who
didn't have those hard lessons?
So if you're just born now Yeah.
And you, you just
grow up an AI native.
Yeah.
You just have always
had this stuff at hand.
You're always using it.
How does that change your
ability to use it to see
the difference between the,
the, the good, the bad.
To know that difference?
Like you talked before about
it A level, B level, C level.
Yep.
If you've never worked with
a bunch of copywriters and
seen a, B and C level copy.
How will you know when AI's
actually doing the right thing?
Right.
You won't.
I, I, I actually just
went through this, right.
You know, as I'm designing
my house, I use a tool called
SketchUp, you know, which I
put in the 3D model Within
that I have to, I built all the
cabinetry in the house and all
the, the closets and everything.
Yeah.
And I had to build
drawers, you know, for,
for every one of those.
Well, in order to go into
SketchUp and create what, what
amounted to 88 drawers to size
them, create the 3D geometry
and whatever, and get 'em all
set up, would've taken forever.
Okay, so this is a perfect
example of me coming from
a space that I'm not in and
being able to do something.
There's no way I would've
ever been able to do.
I go to GPT and I said, here's
a list of all the drawers that
I need, just like the, the
widths and the, uh, depths.
I said, make me
ruby code, right?
That I can import into SketchUp.
That will automatically
create all of the drawers
that would, that would
fit for these dimensions.
Give them a, a notch and a
data and you know, all this
stuff, and create all the
geometry, the full model.
Right.
Five seconds now.
Okay.
Nuts, dude.
Unbelievable, right?
Yeah.
Would've taken me a week.
Okay.
Yeah, and I've got, I
would've gotten it wrong.
Now, a couple things.
Number one, 99% chance, there's
something in there that's wrong.
There's a drawer with
eight sides to it or
something like that.
Yeah.
GT's.
Just not very accurate.
So it helps to know
what you're looking for.
But here's my point.
This is the same
with with finance.
What it would've taken me.
To perform the same operation.
Yeah.
To learn Ruby code, right?
Yeah.
To recheck all of my math,
to be able to sit and see, I
mean, like it would've taken
me, uh, forget the Ruby Code.
It would take me a
week to do it manually.
Right?
Yeah.
And longer to learn Ruby Code.
And someone might say, yeah,
but then you'd know Ruby Code
and here's what I would say.
Cool.
I may never need that again.
Right.
I just needed to
do that one thing.
All my action script and
cold fusion knowledge
is getting used.
Not at all at this point, right.
I'm just say love that stuff.
Like
I don't necessarily, like, I
get learning things and again,
I, I love learning things.
So they we're in a platform
where we teach people
stuff, but not everything
a founder needs to do.
They need to be the
educated expert in all the
eccentricities of that.
It doesn't matter if
you know a, B or C grade
copy, you just need copy.
Yeah.
And if it doesn't sound
like total shit, it's gonna
work.
It's gonna be a
good starting point.
At least you can
always adjust it.
Yeah.
'cause the reality is we're
not gonna know whether it's
good copy or not until it
faces some other humans.
Mm-hmm.
Or maybe some AI and
gets picked up and search
results and whatnot.
Right, right.
Yeah.
So, you know, from my
standpoint, I look at all of
these things that I can now do.
That I couldn't do
five minutes ago.
Okay.
Yeah.
So for example, the big thing
now is people can write code.
Yeah.
Right?
Which is, so, I mean, Ryan, you
and I have haven't written a
line of code in 20 years, right?
Our knowledge is so far from
useful at this point, but now I
can write code in any language
for any purpose I can get
MVPs put together, et cetera.
How is that not
a force multiplier?
The time it takes me to
create a landing page now.
Right now, not a
read to chip, right?
It's gotta go over to Dev and
they gotta do their stuff track.
But the time it takes me to
create a landing page now is
less than the time it would've
taken me to go through the
drawer to find the pencil
to do the sketch on paper.
Right?
It's bananas.
How much faster we can move
and how we can get onto like
the important parts, right?
Because the important part
wasn't drafting the wire frame.
The important part is
getting that page launched.
Getting traffic point of
that page and starting to
then have AI analyze the
results and tell me what
still needs to be changed.
Fantastic.
Right?
This is what you want.
It's short circuits, so
many tedious processes.
The number of hard choices
I have to make now.
Are so significantly lower
because it's like, well, I
can do this, or I could do
that, or I could do that,
or I could do that one.
What are we gonna
get to this week?
All we'll just do,
just yes is the answer.
Now, I love being able to just
say, yes, come on, why not?
Right?
Like, oh my God, in, in my
getting customers workshops
on Mondays and Fridays.
The number of requests I can now
field people that need help with
really heavy lifting stuff were
honestly, most of the lifting
was on their part, but I still
had to show 'em how to do it.
Yep.
This is part of where I'm
just like automating and,
and AIing like crazy.
Like what am I asking founders
to do over and over and
over again That not only
are they resistant to, but I
know they desperately need.
Cool.
Let's AI the shit outta that
because having something done is
better than having nothing done.
Right.
And in a lot of cases it's
just motivating them to do
more of sometimes the manual
work, but it shows them the
power of what that thing is.
If, if anything, it just serves
like a little simulation.
IP, or like, you know, I'm a
huge fan of the Mom test, right?
Yeah.
Love that book.
Please go buy the book.
Rob Fitzpatrick did
a great job with it.
But the process of going
through that, for a lot of
founders, they're like, I'm
just not gonna go do that,
or I'm not gonna go do it.
Right?
It's me going to Barnes
Noble and buying that book.
Right?
It them, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I simulate it for
them in 15 minutes.
Then they're like, oh,
that's what this tells me.
Yeah, that's what this
tells you now, right?
You can trust this to a
degree 'cause it's based on
the average of the internet.
It'll get most of it right?
But you should also pick up
the phone and talk to a couple
of your, your, your people
and get the actual answers.
And it's been a great
motivational factor,
which is awesome.
So if.
Like, and, and here's the
thing, every time I do
that, there isn't a founder
going, but Ryan, aren't
you replacing a part of me?
Yeah, a part of me that
you didn't want to exist
in the first place.
Right?
Alright.
Right.
Nobody's upset about it.
Nobody.
They're all like, great.
I can get onto the
part where we turn that
into useful information
to sell people stuff.
You know, something that's
really funny about everything
we talk about here is
that none of it is new.
Everything you're dealing
with right now has been done a
thousand times before you, which
means the answer already exists.
You may just not know it.
But that's okay.
That's kind of what
we're here to do.
We talk about this stuff on
the show, but we actually
solve these problems all
dayLong@groups.startups.com.
So if any of this sounds
familiar, stop guessing
about what to do, let us just
give you the answers to the
test and be done with it.
As a carpenter myself, uh,
whenever I'm, you know, building
a house, I think to myself,
there's no carpenter ever
that's thinking to themselves.
I'm so pissed off that you gave
me a, a powered circular saw.
My hand saw was so much better.
Yeah.
Dick, come on.
Yeah.
Just rubbing my head without
blisters on my hands just
doesn't feel the same.
Yeah.
You know, like,
need those calluses.
All
right.
So we've definitely said yes.
There's tons of stuff that
can be replaced, right?
Yeah.
And, and we're almost
saying, and should be.
Right.
Like, like do not resist.
In this case, a lot of the
stuff, not everything, and
we're about to go the other
direction, a lot of this
stuff should be replaced.
We should embrace the
replacing like we're shedding
skin because the world
just got way easier for us.
Yeah.
But let's talk about
the other side.
You know, we said the,
the topic of this is
can AI replace founders?
But let's talk about
the other side.
What makes us unique?
What is AI not
likely to replace?
And I wanna caveat this by
saying there is a sci-fi
version of everything.
Where you could say and make
an argument, and I'm one
of the people that can make
this argument that would
say, no matter how hard you
try to say that humans are
always going to be unique.
We are an algorithm, and
algorithms can be replicated.
Right?
So I, I wanna be clear when I
say this, we're not, Ryan and
I aren't sitting here being
like humanity is, you know,
irreplaceable in any way.
That like, we, we recognize that
at some extreme level there's
probably an AI that, that can do
some things, but at a practical
level, at a level that actually
makes sense for, for either now
or in, in the very near future.
I don't believe that AI can
do some really human things.
Sure.
And I don't believe it should.
I think, you know, if, if
we're saying AI can create
music, but should it, right?
Yeah.
Yes.
It can create something Right.
But the point of music
wasn't to make the music.
It was a form of expression,
which usually comes from a
place of need to express Right.
AI will never need
to express itself.
Correct.
It doesn't take
anything away from that.
Correct.
Right.
And I think now there's
something really fascinating
about how we get to
use our uniqueness.
Let's say again, I'm gonna
go back to me as a writer,
imagine for a second.
There are two components
of me being a writer.
The part where I can generate
a unique thought that people
might give a shit about,
and the part where I can
translate that to words that
people might wanna read.
Yeah.
Okay.
The latter has been
mostly replaced, right?
Yeah.
Just about any thought I
have can be translated to
words that are 90% of what
I would've used anyway.
Okay.
As weird as that
is, it's It's true.
But the unique thought.
This, this unique idea,
this, this, this unique
opinion, et cetera.
AI can come up with variants.
They can't come up with
my variant necessarily.
Right?
So what happens is my voice now,
I mean my voice vis-a-vis the
work that I do, the things that
I produce in life, et cetera,
becomes force multiplied.
Yeah.
If before I could, my opinion
could generate one article, now
my opinions can generate 50.
Right now they can generate
a goddamn movie in the
not to distant future.
That is amazing.
But in order for all that to
happen, the uniqueness has to
be me having something to say.
Yeah.
It starts with that, right?
Like the, the things that
it's, you know, the, the key to
differentiators at this point
are, you know, like vision,
narrative, human urgency,
moral compass, like these
things can't be replaced yet.
Humor still not
particularly good at that.
Right.
Um, but I wonder to some degree,
like you said, that like, it
can't come with my thought, but.
Part of that, how, how
much of that is, is the way
that we use it right now?
Mm-hmm.
Right
Now, I have tested
this a little bit.
I played around with like,
instead of saying, here's
what I think, right?
The rest of this, it's
sort of like, here's
the thing that happened.
What do you think my
reaction to this is?
Right.
It's interesting.
It's really interesting
and, and basically like,
what do I think about this?
What do you think I
think about this based on
what you know about me?
What do you think?
I think because we've both
given AI plenty of information
about ourselves, and certainly
it learns all the time as
we're, as we're utilizing it,
but to your point, it comes up
with some, some possibilities.
I, I would say it's still.
Generally not close.
But then I wonder like how
much of that is my own bias
saying that's not exactly what
I would've thought about that.
Or, well, when I thought
about it already, that's
not what I thought about it.
But how about this?
What if we were taking
this a step further and
we're to say, what matters
now is what you want.
Not what the AI might
respond to mm-hmm.
But what you specifically want.
In other words, I can go
into an AI right now and I
can say, give me ideas for
what startups might want.
Okay.
And it'll, it'll come
up with tons of ideas.
And, and I would say it'll
come up with probably
75% of the ideas that I
would've come up with.
Right.
Just enough darts at a wall.
Right.
Like, uh, you know, whatever.
But the, and, and, and one
of them might've matched
what I was gonna say.
That's perfectly fine.
Right.
But the point is,
I'm the curator.
I'm the one that
says, no, not that.
Yes, that.
No, not that.
Yes, that.
My vision, what I
want is what matters.
That goes back to music.
Yes, AI can create some
version of music, but the
composer is what matters.
The composer decides right.
Is that what they want?
Right.
It's not like, uh,
I'm a composer.
The AI creates a song and
I'm like, I hate it, but
I have to have it anyway.
Right.
The whole point is, yeah, we
are, we are the final decision.
We, you know, we are, to your
point earlier, the architect
of all of this we're the one
that our curatorial ability
to be able to say, yes,
this, yes, this, yes, this,
whether it's people, product,
marketing, copy, et cetera,
is what makes us unique.
Yeah, I mean at this point, like
go back to some of our other
analogies, like AI can draft
all the blueprints, but like
it can't convince the city to
build the skyline, can't it?
Right.
Like
Right.
Or just have the vision to why
you'd wanna do it to begin with.
Right.
What I'm saying is
what makes us unique is
this curatorial vision.
What doesn't make us
unique is laying all the
bricks to do it anymore.
No, I know.
So again, going back to to,
to my, my place in the world
as a writer, which I've
given a lot of thought to.
What makes me unique
is the fact that I have
a lot of unique ideas.
Right, or just, or unique to me,
whether anybody else has thought
'em before, who cares, right?
Unique to me.
But now I no longer have
the time element, the
writer's block element,
et cetera, that prevents
me from expressing them.
Right.
So whereas before, you know, I
read a, a weekly newsletter that
you, that we published, that we,
that we do this podcast based
on before, I'm like, okay, it
takes me x amount of time to
take whatever unique idea I had.
Like, can I replace founders
and convert that into, uh, copy.
Now it still takes me
roughly the same amount of
time, uh, because I like
to play with the idea.
I like to wrestle with the idea.
It's not like I'm just trying
to write a, a newsletter.
Like I try to, like,
I, it's very cathartic
for me, but ultimately.
It's my idea, right?
Uh, you know, that I'm breaking
AI can gimme 50 variants of,
of how AI would talk about
it, but I'm still the curator.
I'm still the one to say,
yes, this, no that, yes,
this, no, that it's my job.
And this is, this is a metaphor
for building a startup.
It's still my job to
orchestrate all of this.
Well, it always was, right?
It's, it's funny to me that we
don't think about it in these
same ways because in a lot of
cases, at the early stages, as
the founder, we, we start by
doing everything, and then the
second we can afford it, we
start to hire out specialists.
We start to hire out other
people, sometimes not even
specialists, just people
can do the work, right?
If it's just rote work, you
hire people capable of rote work
and they do the work, right?
You don't hire a bricklayer.
If you're building a 6,000
square foot high house,
you hire a bunch of them.
Right?
Right.
So we've always had this
concept that like, you know,
we'll, we'll hire it out.
We'll hire out the work.
We'll, we'll divide the labor.
We just have a different
ability to do that.
Right.
GPT just became the assembly
line to our Henry Ford.
Right.
We got the same 24
hours of work in.
Yep.
But we've got a hundred
x the output now.
You bet.
You bet.
Now I also think another
aspect which, which I, I don't
wanna overlook or not get
into, is just the fundamental
concept of leadership.
Be it a mixture of pure
anxiety, like pure,
unadulterated, anxiety,
excitement in fervor, right?
Yeah.
Vision, which I think is a
term that's overused, but it's,
it's certainly a part of this.
Right.
And just fucking determination.
Determination.
Just be able to
say determination,
deciding that we are, we're
going to keep doing this
until we get it right.
Correct.
AI's not
gonna care.
Yeah.
Right.
And, and nor should it.
Right.
That's the point though.
Like if you look behind any
successful company and frankly
many unsuccessful ones, what
you have behind this company is
a freakishly determined person.
Yeah.
To see this through,
despite all logic.
Right.
That's what makes founders
the most unique, is that
we are able to run in, run
naked, into the abyss despite.
Everything that would
tell us otherwise.
Yes.
And figure out how to somehow
come out on the other side.
I'll give you an example.
Uh, you know, one of my
favorite would be both
Airbnb and Uber, right?
Two famously successful
companies with the
dumbest ideas ever.
Okay?
When I say dumb, I, I, I,
obviously, I, I'm kidding when
I say this, but when those poor
bastards had to go out there
into the market and pitch this
idea, they both got eviscerated.
Rent your couch
to strangers, right?
Everyone who owns a car
can be a taxi driver.
Now, who would fund that?
Who would fund that?
Right.
That's the dumbest idea.
Like do you have any
understanding the first
time someone doesn't come
home from an Airbnb because
yeah, they got taken.
Or somebody that doesn't
ever get out of a Uber cab
is the end of that business.
Like no one will
ever use it again.
And you know, I,
I go back further.
I go back to eBay.
Wait, someone's gonna put
pictures on the internet
Uhhuh and say that they
own something, right?
Yep.
And someone's just gonna
send them money and hope
they, they actually had it.
I'm gonna the money and hope
it gets here.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm like, that'll never work.
Yeah.
Somehow it did.
Right?
But
my point is, do
you know how many
kidneys I've bought
for the Prince of of
Kenya?
So, but here's the point, man.
In order for that to
work, you have to have an
individual behind it that
has an optimism, that looks
beyond analysis, that looks
beyond, you know, rationality.
Yep.
And says, yeah,
but what if, right?
But what if Right.
Like, and gets is the core of us
agree, right?
And gets other people
to agree, right?
From Absolutely.
From partners to, to, to
funders, to customers, to staff.
And I get, that's what I was
getting at before, right?
Like again, AI can
craft the blueprint.
AI could probably even contract
out the house, but like.
You gotta live in it, you
gotta convince somebody else
to buy it, to live in it.
That's not yet, we're
nowhere near that yet.
Uh, so where we have that
level of confidence in this
thing.
So let me take this to
the next level, right?
If, if, if all this is true,
if, if our uniqueness is our
ability to create, innovate,
lead, et cetera, then if
we were to think about
what's the job description?
Of the next
generation of founder.
Here's how I've been
thinking about it.
You know, again, as a
founder myself, I've been
thinking about it as well.
Number one, my job
description is to stop
doing things that something
else can do for me, right?
Yep.
Not of laziness, out of
straight up efficiency.
The second thing, and I think
this is the hardest bit for,
for me, Ryan, has been stop
thinking in, in what your
previous output terms were.
It goes back what I
said a moment ago.
In one day I could
create five pages.
Yep.
You're no longer the guy
that can create five pages.
That's taken me a long time to,
to get outta that mentality.
I still ha like, I think
about my output still
being a, a version one
of will, so to speak.
That's been hard.
How about
you?
I think for me it wasn't just
about recalibrating the output,
but even reconsidering the KPI.
Right?
So it wasn't like, okay, so not
five pages of content, a hundred
pages of content, neither.
Right?
So it used to be five
pages of content.
Now it's.
How much impact did it have?
Right?
How many likes did it get?
How, what?
What was the intent of the car?
Right?
It depends on what the
intent of the content was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But rather like getting
to that final outcome.
Because writing the writing the
newsletter wasn't the point.
It's now let's measure it in how
many pieces of positive feedback
did we get on that thing, right?
Because now we can focus
on something entirely
different, and by the way,
feed that back into the
machine and have it help us
to achieve even more of that.
So it's a shift from doing the
work to creating the impact.
Correct.
So I think that's really where
it goes from because we used
to just have to do the work
and then measure the impact.
Now I think we can just
stay at more like the impact
layer, at least theoretically,
because we truly no longer
have to do the work.
At least three parts
and, and also like
again, how we think about
building our organizations.
It used to be add lots of
headcount, like that was the
seminal like bragging point.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, we've done whole
episodes about this where it's
like a CEO would say, well, I
have this many people, and it
would imply that that's like an
army that they have the ability
to, to go to war with, right?
And, and more people.
When are we gonna
hear this?
Brag Will, we're
gonna hear this brag.
We were gonna drop
the headcount thing.
Nobody's gonna say like, yeah,
we just hit a thousand people.
Like, yeah, we just hit,
uh, 1500 a day on our,
uh, on our API costs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
At some point that
goes there, right?
Like that becomes the new brag.
It's like we are running so much
AI within that, you're gonna
have a lot of people
who have to kind of
recalibrate what that means.
Sure.
Particularly founders, because
again, our old job description
was get lots of resources,
ergo, capital, humans, et
cetera, to get big things done.
And all of a sudden
those same pieces don't
mean what they used to.
And we're like, wait a minute.
My job isn't to go
hoard all that stuff.
My job is to figure out how
to be wildly efficient to, to
be able to do 10 x with, uh,
10 x more, with 10 x less.
Which by the way, for,
for early founders is the
best news in the world.
Exactly.
You don't have any resources.
Right.
But I think this is particularly
difficult for, call it
more seasoned founders like
ourselves, is that we're
calling ourselves these days.
I'm trying to think a
really kind word, but
I think for, for us.
You know, we have to, to
zoom out and say, dude, the
way I was built in, in the
world I came from before,
thankfully does not exist.
And I've gotta evolve.
Yeah.
I have to evolve to
this next version of me.
Or like everything else,
someone else evolve for me.
Yeah, man, I'm, I'm hoping
we see more and more like.
Comfort around that evolution.
'cause I'm still seeing
a lot of people see that.
Oh, you never do though,
man.
This is, this is the
part, you and I have
been through this before.
I know we went the earliest and,
and we were still kids, so to
speak, was the PC revolution.
Remember how many, oh my God.
How many people were
like, I don't want one
of those on my desk.
Right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Even my secretary
and a typewriter.
That went well.
And then, you know, the era
that we grew up, smack dab in
the middle of the internet era
in the nineties, every single
person was like, you know, I
don't want that damn internet.
Right?
Like, oh, that guy ain't
around anymore.
Right.
I will never forget it wasn't
the sales call, it was a
consult meeting, like was,
we used to know, walk into
people's offices and sat
down and started explaining.
And you, you've talked about
this too, like explaining to
people what the internet was.
And this guy totally smug is
like, oh, I have that right
here in my desk drawer and pulls
out the aol an a OL three and a
half floppy, or maybe not aol.
May have been, may
have been copy.
It was somebody right
point being like.
I had no idea.
And it was one of those
people probably not around.
Right.
And all of those are dinosaurs.
Right.
The key for us as founders
is not to be that dinosaur.
Yeah.
In order to not to be
the dinosaur, you gotta
embrace the change.
Yeah.
Even if you don't like
it, it it, no one's saying
you have to like it.
No one's saying you
have to be pro ai.
You can hate ai.
Yeah.
But you have to evolve with it.
It's part of the
world right now.
And yes, it's got a crazy
number of drawbacks.
Right.
Yeah.
That's okay.
That's okay.
Uh, some of those
will get worked out.
Some of those will get
worse if we're being honest.
Yeah.
But our job isn't to figure
out why it's wrong per se.
Yeah.
Our job is to be able to say,
okay, now I get to do this.
Now I get to do this.
Like now I get to write
Ruby Code to make.
Uh, drawer boxes, right?
Yep.
In, in a way that I could
never do before, right?
Yeah.
Now I get to be able to answer
questions in five seconds.
That would've taken me a week.
Right?
Now I get to do
all these things.
What does it mean for me?
What is v two of me knowing
that all, like everything
has changed, right?
And that I can kind of be
like, uh, forever extended.
Ryan, do you remember,
uh, in the Matrix when,
uh, he downloads Kung fu
when Kea Reeves, uh, do
downloads kung fu, right?
That classic, oh,
I know Kung fu.
I tried for weeks
to download Kung fu.
It turns out I, it doesn't work.
Well, so, but my point is like,
we now have that ability, right.
So to speak.
Yeah.
Right.
Like we now have that
ability, if we don't evolve
and leverage that ability,
we will get replaced.
Yeah, of course.
Not by ai, but by the
other founders who, who are
actually using ai using it.
Right, right.
And, and using it and
embracing it in the way
that it's supposed to be.
And so, so here's what
I would say overall.
I think, you know, when
we look at the question,
can AI replace founders?
Yes.
If we let it, yes.
If we let it, if we become no
more than just those automatons
that we're doing, you know,
rote work, then, then yes,
it can and, and frankly,
right, it probably should.
But if we zoom out and say,
okay, uh, you know, some
of that's scary, et cetera.
But if I use this, if I
exist as the architect,
the curator, the creative
mind, right, the mastermind
behind all these tools, now
I can create 10 x what I
would've ever created before.
Now I can become a founder
and, and have the, the outcome
and the output that I've
never even dreamed of before.
At which point we
evolve to that person.
Literally anything is possible.
Overthinking your startup
because you're going it alone.
You don't have to, and honestly,
you shouldn't because instead,
you can learn directly from
peers who've been in your shoes.
Connect with bootstrap
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helping them win in the
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