Why must I learn to build again to compete with AI?

Investors in Silicon Valley are sexist and ages. >> How the hell do we navigate what's going on when there's a million different companies starting up with AI and how everything's changing so rapidly? Throughout my 20s, I thought I was unstoppable on the cover of magazines. And then now these YC kids who are working 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. 6 days a week, living on pizza and ramen, and studied computer science and just finished like 6 months ago. That's your competition now. What would be your advice for founders that are hearing with the harsh reality that someone can build their app in 30 minutes on a weekend? >> You don't have any money. If you're struggling financially, you Everyone, welcome back to 100 Million Dollar Exits. Today, I have Jess Ma on the show with us, a founder who started her first company in college, led it to a nine-figure valuation, and has since founded over 10 plus companies to valuation over a billion dollars across them all. Jess, you are very welcome to the show, and I'm excited to talk about your experience building in Silicon Valley and what's happening in Silicon Valley today with all the rapid developments in AI. Thank you. So excited to be here, and thanks for inviting me. So Jess, uh you have a fascinating story in of itself, but it's been heard before. You You've been on another podcast. You've shared these stories about what happened with Indinero, albeit a very interesting and fascinating story of scaling the the ups and downs of that business. You've since gone on to do many other things, and you have your ear to the pulse uh or a finger on the pulse in Silicon Valley in terms of what's going on, what's happening. And I think that's going to be a far more interesting topic for our guest today trying to figure out how the hell do we navigate what's going on when there's a million different companies starting up with AI and how everything's changing so rapidly. So, with that intro, I'd be curious to just kind of hear what you're seeing right now, and we'll start having uh some conversations about uh what founders can do to prepare. Yeah, sounds good. I would like to start by just sharing that I've had many ups and downs over my career, probably more downs than ups, and I think most entrepreneurs would say the same. And um recently, I have been spending a lot of time with friends who built phenomenal companies, unicorn companies that all of you would have heard of. And I'm having lunch, I'm having dinner with these folks, and the anxiety right now, as of March 2026, it's astronomical. It's through the roof. I mean, these people are barely sleeping, Jason. Okay? These are people who you and I would read on the news and think, "Oh my god, you're super successful." Okay? Last week, I had dinner with friend of mine whose company just raised on a multi-billion dollar valuation, and you know, all over the news, and you know, all the announcements on LinkedIn with the you know, raised nine figures from these VCs, blah blah blah. And And so, I read that. I'm like, "Oh my god, this guy feels like he's on fire and he said and meanwhile, we're hanging out and he's on the verge of a panic attack every single day. And I'm thinking, "That's not good." And so, he's asking me for advice on how to deal with that. And I'm like, "Well, ironically, by not having as much success, it makes it a little bit easier to learn how to deal with these things. And by having so many downs in my career, I've been so practiced at this, but this ins- this example is not isolated, Jason. This is I'd say the norm. And so, you're going around at these conferences, people have another persona, right? The persona of I'm winning, I'm crushing it, because they're trying to sell, they're trying to get customers, they're trying to get big enterprises to adopt their solution, they're trying to raise more capital. So, to be able to actually get a pulse on what's going on, it's very difficult unless you're having these one-on-one conversations, ideally in the heart of Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Um so, that's what's happening right now in a nutshell. It's very stressful times here. Uh don't trust what you read in the news. It's largely fake and manufactured, and um it's uh Yeah, I mean, happy to go into more detail, but that's my read on what's going on. >> And so, when it comes to these anxiety levels, like, you know, you look at the Elon Musk of the world, which everyone points to as very public and visible of his high levels of anxiety and like intense, you know, days of impossible work hours. Yeah. >> Is that just the nature of these founders, or has something changed? Did he not take secondary or she not take secondary in that big transaction and feeling a little scared? Or, you know, do they get secondary and they're just naturally just scared for what's around the corner? Yeah, I mean, I think for me and for a lot of my my peers in business, it's actually not financial, Jason. I think if you don't have any money, if you're struggling financially, you you think that it's about the money. But then, when you actually pull back the curtain and talk to these folks, it's about relevancy, it's about importance, it's about ego, it's about like, will And in this case, yeah, these founders are taking secondaries, and they have side hustles that make money. Um so, it's not about that. They They think it's about that. They're like, "Okay, I got X million off the table. That's not enough. I actually need, you know, I'll feel better if I could take 30 off the table." But that isn't the satisfying thing. They're actually worried about the existential threat posed by AI to their business. So, that's why I asked that question in terms of financial, cuz when it comes to what I see is like the billion-dollar founders, like the the ones that are truly unicorn founders, that I would say is more the attributes that I picked up on is relevance, scale, power, influence, um it is more of what they're concerned about. So, what is happening now that you think this level of anxiety is increasing when it comes to those attributes being threatened? I think it's it's a lot of what I went through, Jason. I mean, I had Throughout my 20s, I felt like I was on fire. I thought I was unstoppable, you know, on the cover of magazines, and you know, featured in the press in a very great way. And and then now I'm in my mid-30s and no one cares about me, Jason. Okay? Like now it's about the cool AI kids who are like 22 years old with like, you know, 10 billion-dollar companies. And if you look at Y Combinator, the famed accelerator that's responsible for, you know, Coinbase, DoorDash, Stripe, all these hot companies, and I went through Y Combinator. I was mentored by Paul Graham like over 15 years ago. I read all his essays through college, was totally obsessed and enamored by him. And I wrote a few blog posts that got to the top of Hacker News, and then he emailed me saying, "Hey, like you should come to Y Combinator and join." And I did. And and Y Combinator today, they are still producing very good companies, I think. Um the talk of Y Combinator being irrelevant and dead, I think is total nonsense. Um now granted, there's a lot of companies in Y Combinator, and not all are going to be good, but there are going to be a lot that are great. And they are taking on kids who haven't even finished college yet, who study computer science, who are just very, very fast at building and shipping and deploying products. And I think that made me realize, "Oh my god, like I am becoming less relevant right now if I can't move as fast as they can." And so, that basically caused me to pause for the past basically 12 months, Jason, to recalibrate and get back to building myself hands-on, which sounds ridiculous, because I've had many hundreds of employees reporting to me. I've hired thousands of employees across my career. So, I thought I was past all of that. I'm like, "Yes, now I get to just manage and operate from a strategic level, right?" Like all that all those buzzwords of like, "All right, now I can, you know, be like strategic and not have to do." Well, that's completely backwards now. Now, at the highest levels, you have to do. And if you're not able to do, then your product's going to fall behind. And your whole strategy, you can't execute it as quickly as you want, cuz you have to wait to hire other people to do it. Like AI has completely flipped that on its head. So, for me, a few years ago, I thought, "Okay, I'm going to be able to build a system around me, hire a bunch of people who can help me start a bunch of companies and incubate a bunch of things." And today, that's absolutely not true. Today, I'm personally working on an idea, and I'm personally going to build the product, website, prototype, because if I don't, it's going to take another 2 months to get to realize this vision that I so clearly have in my head. And with this, we don't have like Neuralink yet, or, you know, whatever way to plug into my brain and download what I'm thinking, it it's too time-consuming to communicate what I want than for me to just build it now with AI. And so, you might say, "Oh, that's not so bad. It'll just take you a little bit more time." No, it's terrible, Jason. It's existential, because my competitor could just build it themselves. You know, these YC kids who are working 996, which means 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. 6 days a week, and living on pizza and ramen, and studied computer science and just finished like 6 months ago. That's your competition now. You know? And what I also want to bring up about that is like, they now have access to the knowledge and tools of, you know, the the most elite to, you know, the bottom like it it levels the playing field in terms of access to be able to build something. Like you don't have to have 10 years of experience in, you know, Python, React, you know, uh whatever language uh your product language you need to build something from scratch. Like you can just have persistence. Uh so I feel like that's that's one of the most important things with AI is I build things myself. I'm just like it's like, okay, I know if I'm going to start this, I'm going to have I'm going to do this for the next like 4 to 6 hours uninterrupted. Otherwise, I'm not I'm not going to make any progress. So I have to filter for everything I do, but um as you kind of see your you know, seeing this and you talked about these you know, unicorn founders that are experiencing this level of anxiety of just like, how do I compete? How are you How are you seeing them respond? So it's like, okay, they have the anxiety, they have the concern, they have the the feeling of the threat. But how are they basically turning that into an action? And what are you seeing them do? Um I'm seeing them not react to this um gracefully, to say the least. Um so it's it's kind of like there are there are a few stages, right? There's um there's just like basic fear of being irrelevant or having their company go under. Um and and or just falling behind, right? Like I know one founder whose company indirectly competes with Cursor and Claude code. And you know, he's got a unicorn and now his product is falling behind and now he's worried that the whole business will implode in the next 36 months, right? And meanwhile yesterday I had lunch with an engineering lead at Cursor who talks to all of these customers and says that a lot of these engineers at these companies that are YC-backed even, but they're unicorn companies now, well-known companies, including some that I mentioned, the culture is actually not as fast-moving as you would think. These are engineers who are now mid-career and they're like, why are you telling me what to do? I know how to do things. Like I you know, I am you know, using AI to code, so like stop micromanaging me. But but they're only applying the stuff from 6 months ago and what's been released by say Cursor this month is already going to level them up by 20%. And the point being that these founders aren't um taking as much of a top-down approach to this as they should. A lot of them are still uh running their engineering teams and their product teams and their companies in a very like, you know, Kumbaya, like, all right, like it's we'll figure it out together. What do you guys want to do? We're going to empower our workforce, which works for many other things, but for for transitioning into this new AI-first culture, I don't think that works. You have to be very a bit more um uh top-down and demanding, candidly, as a as a CEO if if you're going to pivot your your culture successfully. And then also your other question on their psychology, right? It's like, that's another problem cuz if they're just like feeling burned out and and like scared all the time, there's only so much work you can do here. You know, a lot of that's internal and you know, you don't want to fry yourself out in the meantime. So we could talk about that as well. So how like in you you maybe share a personal story in this regard of like, this choice of like, okay, you you had an area, you had like hundreds of employees, hired thousands of people. Um we went from this culture of you scale with headcount and then you go into this world where it's like, headcount isn't necessarily the driver for success and it could be a liability in terms of scaling with headcount. How How should founders be preparing for this shift? Like how how are you preparing for this shift? Well, I have the gift of starting a lot of companies from scratch right now. And in my work now, we are structuring these teams and companies to not need a lot of talent and to be seven-figure, eight-figure ARR companies with only a few employees. Um and I've got a few examples of that right now where we've got contracts lined up making several of my companies seven-figure, eight-figure eight-figure ARR companies um once, you know, a certain feature or product set is delivered. And being able to have that commitment lined up before I devote resources to something, that's pretty unusual, but that's unlocked now in 2026 because I know I can move so fast and deliver a promise within a few months. This is very important. It's not going to take me years. Literally just got off a call with another founder and I was telling him, he's like, you know, hey, I'm I'm going to start raising money. And I was just like, he's he's a friend, I you know, know him well and um you know, it's too early uh for most, you know, cap for most capital raises. And I was trying to have a conversation with him. I was like, look, like the the bar has moved dramatically in terms of what's expected. Like a seed stage round of raising a couple million dollars or whatever it might be, like has moved to where it's like, you need you need a couple million potentially and like rapidly. And they're like, well, that's that's crazy. Like how's that possible? It's like, that's what everyone else is doing. Like there's enough people that are having these insane ramp-ups because they just they tested and iterated fast enough with AI to figure out what actually worked and then got to market as fast as possible, failed, tried something else, tried, you know, and that's like in a week or 2 weeks worth of time. Whereas historically, you know, if you have team of developers and you're going back and forth, it would take a couple months to kind of have that kind of uh iteration. And so that's kind of I'd be curious to kind of get your take, especially in Silicon Valley, like the expected ramp-up of traction and and how you're seeing that divvy up between say more complicated deep tech AI type products versus like application layer. And what are you kind of seeing get funded in those kind of early to mid stages? It's a lot harder to fund it in the early and mid stages. I mean, a lot of my friends who are GPs of funds are focusing on second-time founders now and third-time founders. Um so so it's a bit harder for the first-timers unless they go through Y Combinator, I would say, or something like that. Um deep tech is totally different because they need capital still. But yeah, I mean, I totally agree with your assessment, Jason. It's the ramp-up the expectation is totally different. Um and and I think everyone's trying to get used to that now. And also I think what a lot of founders don't have perspective on um is if founders make friends with a bunch of GPs, it would be really helpful for them because then they realize how there are so many companies that look like them and sound like them. And like I'll see a deck, I'm like, oh my god, I've seen like 20 companies just like this in the past year. It's just too easy to have competition. So obvious ideas are no longer viable anymore unless you are a repeat founder who already has um connections in that industry and customers lined up. Um without that and some other uniqueness, it's it's impossible. Um and yeah, I mean, how do you see with that because cuz you see so many deals too that probably look identical. That and that's what I try to tell people all the time. It's just like, so many founders are just like in the weeds, like, I'm building my dream. I'm building the future, blah blah blah blah blah. It's like, cool product, bro, but there's 40 other deals just like yours at your stage. Like how are you truly differentiated and how It's an oversimplification cuz like I think there are cases where founders have connections with investors and they're shooting the and they get an agreement, you know, like they get a term sheet relatively easily cuz they have a trust of relationship. Those things are, you know, happen all the time. It's not the anomaly, it's just not visible for everyone. But then there's like founders that are just have to bust their ass off and run a proper process. If they don't have traction, if they don't have the ramp-up and acceleration cuz like I've seen definitely people get funded at the first million, 2 million relatively easily if they just have a generally good team and a good idea. But it's that next round. Like the seed stage round has become like it was series A was like the big wall and then now it's like moving to seed. Like it's just like uh >> It's all the it's all language though cuz like the seed rounds from when I was doing a seed round, it was like half a million to a million bucks, right? So so >> That could still happen, but it's, you know, well, in terms of raise back then, yeah, it was about a half a million, million. Now it's like 2 to 10. >> amounts, yeah. Exactly, exactly. It's just so crazy, right? But there's no pre-seed when I was going. It was seed, series A. Yeah, it's angel and seed and like seed was relatively new in like the kind of early 2015 uh 2000 >> Yeah, exactly. And so what I had to kind of tell founders is like, what will you win like what niche will you win? Cuz like everyone's like, well, I got to be a billion-dollar company. I got to have like a billion-dollar outcome. So they boil the ocean. They say like, oh, we're going to do everything. It's like, well, no one no one believes you're capable of that today. So tell me like how you're going to win one thing and be the best at one thing and how that creates a wedge for, you know, an expanded market opportunity once once it's appropriate. Um >> Yeah, that's very well said. Well, from your >> do you Yeah. Good. >> Cuz like you see so many founders, like like are you seeing that the repeat founders, are they able to adapt and you know, get on top of all the AI stuff or do you are a bunch of them having trouble because they're thinking, okay, I already had some success, therefore this should be easier. It's a mixed bag and like running so being in the post exit of the founder community which we're both members of, I run the London chapter here and I see the I see the range like I see the venture studio path which is a similar path that you took where it's like I don't want to do one I want to do many and um and they you know feel like they have the Midas touch. A lot of those don't work out. A lot of those you know they try for a little bit and then if they you know it fizzles out. Um I would say the general theme I see is like if they made enough they either have the ego kind of pieces that you talked about in terms of like they want the influence they want the relevance they want the ability to create and they will build and they are the ones that are adapting relatively quickly. The if they're going into something new. Um where the ones that had had a success way back and they already have another successful company now not seeing them iterate as fast. Um and kind of waiting like oh let's see where this plays out as opposed to like getting ahead of the curve. Um and so I I see the different range but I say like what is just a big stark difference between like a beginner first time founder and a repeat founder uh in today's market it just depends on the I hate to say but it does depend on age quite a bit. Like the younger founders just go straight into native AI and there's just not even a concept of what was. And the ones that have been in the game for a little bit trying to replicate their old playbook. And those that are trying to play their own playbook I'm not like I'm like sorry it's it's like it it worked before but it's not going to work now. >> >> Yeah. Well I mean a lot of it's really tough conversation. A lot of um a lot of people I've had conversation with say uh that investors in Silicon Valley are sexist and ageist and there's a bias towards the young 22 year old male founder and I believe that's the case. So Jason are we treating a cultural problem by the fact that we're not funding women as much according to the data and we're not funding mid career later career founders who have a lot of experience who you know um might not be as on top of the technology um you know it's it's kind of weird because you know um you are allowed to discriminate as an investor. Um in fact in the investor circles I believe it's actively encouraged based on what I've been reading from a bunch of these chat groups I'm in. Um but also it's a bit unnerving at the same time and I'm trying to uh make sense of it and curious if you have an opinion. I do. I see you know it's obviously been a hot topic for years in terms of the um the lack of diversification or diversity in capital allocation. And yeah it's just it's a natural progression of where capital concentrates typically middle aged older white men who know middle aged you know like know more white men uh that they typically just are in circles with they trust more already and they will do business amongst themselves. And it's a self fulfilling prophecy then creates pattern recognition and they're like well it works. You know it's not to say that had they gone out of their comfort zone and you know listened to other people you know women people of color whatever it might be to you know actually see them through it's just so much easier for them to justify the pattern recognition than it is to in ironically I always hate saying this like take the risk it's like the whole job is to take a risk. >> >> Um but they they don't take the the the risk on kind of the uh unproven you know founder or pattern recognition. And so whether that's you know right or wrong it's what's led to such a minuscule amount of capital going outside of um you know kind of a you know non white male uh capital like in terms of founders. Um and also I think there's a natural progression for people typically have more of a comfort uh so like the people that get funded typically have come from a more comfortable life had more access to better schooling better networks better resources and so therefore they have you know more doors open for them to pursue this or those that come from more diverse backgrounds they don't necessarily have those connections nor the means to not make an income for a year or two years and uh you know take those types of risks. So that's a general theme I've seen um but uh yeah it's unfortunate for greater society cuz I think if women were in more empowered positions of power we probably wouldn't have the wars and conflicts that we would have today but >> >> Just just a personal opinion. But Um so I guess what what this is kind of forcing which is kind of interesting is um a lot of the women I know cuz I I have a few groups where um it's just a bunch of women who are entrepreneurs and in the past it's been a lot of uh like griping about how Silicon Valley is sexist and um one of the things I I tell all these women is how in many ways it's a gift and a blessing that it kind of forces us to be so much more on top of our unit economics so much more efficient with how we build our businesses how do we do more with less and obviously it's not ideal of a situation but you know how do we um you know turn lemons into lemonade and uh you know sometimes you get a random yeah. How are you seeing women in these groups? Um cuz like it's it's so unfortunate cuz you sit in there like you're talking about pragmatic business internet economics from like a women's leadership and like that's typically the direction I see I usually meet women that have just more like better running businesses from the the get go cuz that's the benchmark they have whereas their counterparts um that are raising the pleasin's amounts of money you know uh typically men they don't have those at all and they are yet free to you know kind of sell the vision and sell the story and not so much the economics of the business where women are being kind of told oh you should just run a better business well despite that's not where the capital really goes in venture. Like what what's kind of your perception uh perception of that? Real quick if you're a founder doing over 5 million in revenue and want to know what the best 100 million dollar plus founders are doing to fuel their growth then make sure to subscribe to our 100 million dollar exits newsletter get the playbooks that are proven on how to fund grow and sell your business. I'll even give you a curated list of investors that want to invest in your business. It's totally free all you have to do is click that link down below subscribe do it now I promise it's worth it you won't regret it you got nothing to lose. Go ahead subscribe now back to the show. I agree with you that a lot of women have better run businesses and I think ironically it creates a perception from a lot of the male VCs that okay this is a better run business but that also makes it like less likely that this will be a venture scale outcome. So it kind of like it it kind of supports the story of okay this is a good business but not meant to be a venture business. And and then of course all the women are like oh my god this is so crazy this is so terrible for us. And it's like we're running better businesses but why don't they see that this is fundable? Um and um so in some ways actually I think AI is going to be the great equalizer here because it it will enable anyone who's motivated enough to just like get more impact right? Like now the businesses that I'm starting um probably not going to have any of them funded a lot of them. I'd say you know of the next 10 businesses I start my guess is that eight of them won't take any outside funding. Two out of the 10 might take outside funding if I really see that it could be a venture scale outcome but why do that if you know cuz a lot of you know the founders I talk to you they say oh I raised all this money but you know what secretly I'd be happy if I could just walk away with 20 million bucks. I would be thrilled with that outcome but don't tell the VCs that's how I feel. I hear this all the time Jason all the time. Including from my unicorn founders who are like yeah I got a few million off the table but if I could just get 30 off the table and if the whole thing shut down I wouldn't care that much. I hear that you know. And so that suggests to me well if you can own 100% of this company and just get it to you know 5 million in ARR and you know just pocket the profit you don't even need to sell the company cuz you have the cash flow that you generate from all the money you get from secondary that you have to reinvest anyway after tax you know and figure that whole thing out too right? So you could get to that outcome in the next 12 months on your own with no funding um that's really special and so that's that's my other way of putting um a positive spin on this for women and for minorities and for people who are having more trouble raising capital. Um but that also might just be my optimism Jason um >> >> Well I think it's mission critical to have the optimism if you're building companies. Building companies as a pessimist is a bad place to be. Um so let's let's kind of transition to that. So you know you you you've raised capital you've built a a nine figure business in the past. You know you've had that trajectory you've had your ups and downs and you've made the decision for yourself that it's not go big with one company or not even go you know lifestyle business or like you know profitable business one company you're looking at 10 companies. So, I guess walk us through the the decision process for you to decide on why 10 company or like, you know, maybe more or but just like why you chose the businesses you chose to build the way you built. I get asked this question all the time, Jason. Um, including by my fiance, who's constantly like, "Why don't you just focus on one thing? Put all the wood behind one arrow." My mom says the same thing. She bootstrapped her business and, you know, created a great business that's, you know, done hundreds of millions of dollars in in sales and, you know, just had one thing. And I have a few friends who are um, parallel entrepreneurs, as I like to say, meaning they like to have multiple things going on. And I ask all of them, like, "Why do we do this, guys? Like, wouldn't it be better if we just did fewer things?" And the the the answer across all of these people is the same, Jason. It's "That would be the optimal thing to do, but I'm just not wired that way." If this was purely an IRR maximization play, then maybe that would be the better approach. Find one thing, do it really well, do it over and over and over again. Um, but I think what's beautiful about AI is that it makes it so that actually that is no longer the case. IRR maximization may actually be more possible with the strategy because it's so cheap and easy to create many things and get them to scale really quickly. So, 2 3 years ago, I would have agreed with that. Today, I'm not sure I agree with that assessment anymore. Um, so to directly answer your question, A, I think it's more fun. B, I think you see more more um, different industries. You could build out more expertise areas. You can apply your expertise to multiple things. Um, and um, and also, you don't know what's going to hit sometimes, right? I've started a bunch of things that have not worked out. And and most things will not work out as well as I want them to work out. I would say, you know, 90% of these projects will not realize what I want to see happen. And so, you kind of have to try more things anyway. And and also, if you think about some of these companies, like look at Alphabet. Is Alphabet really just doing one thing? No, Alphabet does like they have a ton of different business lines. Amazon, Microsoft, you know, same thing. >> all fairness to those companies, they have one mega cash cow that funds everything. >> Like, They do, but if you're an entrepreneur, you could argue the same thing. If you're a multi-entrepreneur, you know, you have one or two things that pay your bills. And, you know, and then you have the freedom and the flexibility to try other things. And if you want to have fun with that, you know, by all means do it. But, is it the optimal strategy, Jason? The question That's the ultimate question. The answer is, I don't know. And I don't think for a lot of these multi-entrepreneurs that that's what they're optimizing for anyway. Fair. What are you building? Um, I'm building a lot of different AI businesses that are in stealth right now and that I'm not posting anywhere and and I'm not talking about them. I'm not talking about them for a few reasons. One, because it's just so noisy and loud out there. B, it's too easy to copy stuff right now. Um, and three, um, yeah, I just uh, I just like building in in quiet right now. I think I spent so much of my career being a bit too exposed, where it was too clear like what my ups and downs and lefts rights were. And I think in the age of AI, you know, you see all these companies that are bragging about how much money they raised and how much growth they have and how much revenue revenue they have. I think right now, it's actually better to be a lot more low-key and quiet and humble because, yeah, I might have a few businesses that are going to do great this year, get to you know, mid seven figures or low eight figures, but they might be out of business in three years from now, Jason. So, if I'm here bragging about them and then three years from now, that business is like nothing because of AI. I got I got to a great point because of AI and and then the business totally like, you know, uh, went out of business because of AI. That's going to be embarrassing. So, I want to just recognize that head-on that like that's the real vulnerability and risk here. And I I don't feel comfortable um, I don't think entrepreneurs, you know, if they feel too comfortable, then that's not a good feeling either. But, I don't think I don't think it's good either to be so paranoid and be so uh, nervous that you can't enjoy your life either. There's there's this balance that has to exist energetically in order for an entrepreneur to create from a positive place. So, when you're looking at building these companies, you won't disclose, which unfortunate, but when it comes to the um, the actual build, like, are you building this entirely by yourself? You you vibe coding to the point where it's like in market and you're creating like agents to do the marketing for you or are you assembling teams? Are you hiring like a CEO to take it over? Like, tell us a little bit about how you think about the way these businesses should be built knowing the existential threat that could exist. Yeah, I like to build with partners. I think it's really fun to build with other people. I don't like to build solo. I think right now, it's really important to have multiple perspectives on an idea. So, I'll find a friend. We're having lunch. We're having dinner. So, it's like, all right, Jason, we're hanging out in in London. I'm visiting you and you're telling you about like, yeah, there's this like interesting opportunity with um, you know, water sanitization plants and like this the software is really bad and the service providers who help monitor them, like they're antiquated and we can create this cool thing and I already have the connections. Um, and they would pay tens of millions of dollars for this, Jess, but I just don't have the time. I got like, you know, I'm running Thunder right now, but I wish I had the bandwidth to create this and and uh, and and and let's just assume, Jason, you're not in technology, you're not in AI, you're just a random, you know, you know, person who has great sales connections. So, this is an example. I'd be like, "Awesome. I'll just like throw in five engineers. I've got a ton of engineers in Latin America. Um, and, you know, it'll cost pretty much nothing to fund this um, because it's it's so cost-effective. You already have con- You You'll get the contracts lined up. And then, boom, we're in business. And so, I'm finding probably one or two opportunities like that um, every single week right now, of which I might do one in three of those. So, that's why I have dinner. That's why I go to lunch. That's why I'm traveling all the time to like find those hidden gem opportunities that are just very um, opaque or in some very um, non-obvious area where only you as a domain expert in that area would have actual knowledge and connections. I really like those ideas because they're they're non-obvious. You're not going to read about that in TechCrunch. You're not going to see that on LinkedIn. It's not that sexy. Um, and and they're abundant. They're everywhere. Yeah, I'm I'm glad you say this because this is something I encourage people to do. And this is what I did before I launched Thunder. I just met with people all the time. Just like have coffees, have lunches, have dinners, host dinners. And I think it's, you know, for a founder that's like in the midst of building and like blitzing their their market and and whatnot, maybe not the highest priority. But, for those that are exploratory or trying to figure out the edge, um, or have reached a certain level of success where they have real teams underneath them and they need to see what's coming, I feel exactly what you described is one of the best ways to have your, you know, kind of your pulse have a finger on the pulse of what's going on in the market. Um, what are the opportunities that, you know, could happen? Like, I know Open Cloak kind of like took the world by storm the last couple of months. Um, >> >> I've, you know, avid user myself and, you know, now integrating like Cloak Code uh, remote and all these different things. Um, definitely think this future, but like I'm so like at the you know, barely scratching the surface in terms of its true capability. I'm only I'm only like 10 million tokens in, you know, or or measured by tokens. Like, I I host lunches and dinners and events. Like, I'm hosting an an event uh, on Wednesday about Open Cloak. Like, and that's secretly for me to get a ton of input from other people that are passionate about the topic. Um, it's how I hacked college. I would organize study groups and never study. I would just listen to the smartest person in the class uh, you know, talk about the the topic. I'd organize and put put it together and then I'd get the benefit of all the data that came from it. Um, and so I I totally agree. I think it's one of the smartest ways to spend time, especially after you've you have the clout to kind of meet with people that are, you know, maybe have a more influence or a broader perspective on the market. Um, when you look at how you choose to spend your time with these with the people you're going out with, like, how do you choose how do you choose who you you reach out to them? Is it serendipitous? They kind of reach out to you? Like, how do you manage your time on who you spend time with? It's usually pretty mutual. It's um, someone who I feel like I'm in- interested in learning more about their what's going through their head and, you know, what they're working on. And yeah, I'll reach out and I'll say, "Hey, I'll travel to you, wherever you are, and I will take you to lunch or dinner, and, you know, I'm going to block off three hours so we could really, you know, immerse." I'm not a fan of like 45-minute coffee meetings. I I don't think you get any value out of those. It's either 30-minute phone calls or 3-hour uh meals is kind of my general approach. You say 3-minute phone calls? 30-minute phone calls. >> 3-minute. I was like, "Whoa." Sorry, no. 30 30-minute phone calls or 3-hour meals is my general preferred approach. And also, Jason, what you're doing with like the ski trip for entrepreneurs. Yeah. Um right? That's really cool. >> Three days. >> That's >> >> That's three days, exactly. So, it's like 30 minutes, 3 hours, or 3 days. And I'm doing the same thing, right? Like I'm doing um I just decided to launch an AI sleepaway camp, which is going to be three nights. It's just a bunch of AI nerds and hanging out at a hotel, just like hacking away together. And you know, we'll do a few of those this year. And then I've got a few other um retreats that are three, four nights as well for other entrepreneurs and people I can do business with. So, I probably have six, seven weekends a year for retreats and events I'm organizing just to be able to spend all that time with people. And I'm sourcing great opportunities through doing this. And you're doing this podcast, right? You You're over 100 episodes into this. And now you have 100 friends you've who you know, who now will do a favor for you if you ever wanted to. And uh right? Like Like so, you're doing this really well, I think, Jason. People should just copy you. >> >> Ea- Easy easier said than done. Uh Yeah. And so, yeah, I I I completely agree. And as we kind of look at the future of AI and everyone's kind of scared for the the massive riffs that are going to happen, which like Jack Dorsey at Squared or Block um basically just laying I think it was like 40% of the staff. Um you know, just kind of seeing those types of things happen as some people adopt AI or blame it on something else. Um and as AI consumes our lives, I feel it's so important for these types of interaction. Like the 3-hour lunch, like the the human connection. Cuz we can spend that time getting to know someone, understanding something. And then we can execute 10 we can work less on the actual execution with AI, which I think is how I've been enjoying my time. It's I'm getting far more done with less hour basically less hours and spending more time on calls and meetings. Um but still getting done because like maybe able to put together decks, models, collateral all within like 30 minutes. It's like what took me 8 hours I can have like an acceptable version in 30 to 45 minutes, which is just like insane in terms of productivity gains. Yeah, I agree. For investors and board members and and entrepreneurs, it's it's a huge gift, right? So, now I'm spending most of my time meeting with really cool people and getting ideas. And this is stuff that you're not going to be able to learn just from chatting with Claude or ChatGPT, right? Um you know, if you're trying to go deep into a specific domain and really understand something a lot of those experts, they're not blogging about it. They're not putting out publicly accessible research papers in a timely manner. Like a lot of the academic bio research papers you read, this is from stuff from 12, 18, 24 months ago. And stuff that if you were just meeting with them 24 months ago, you would have found out about it then. So because of that um you know, inaccessibility of this proprietary knowledge still um especially if you're an investor, right? It It is about timeliness. You want to like know about these hot things before they become hot. You got to meet people. Um and so So, in a weird way, AI is leading me to uh spending more time off my computer than on my computer. And see, I I feel like that's the unlock that a lot of people aren't realizing. They see like, "Oh, yeah, it's going to take my job." It's like, "No, what does it open up in terms of you know, productivity?" But you bring up a really interesting point in terms of like inside information or just kind of knowing what's going on. Like I was meeting with a VC the other day and they were walking me through like this really cool thing that they're doing, which I you know, I can't disclose, but I was just like like why does why are you not talking about this more? Like this is so fascinating. He's like, "Well, that's my edge." Like why would I publish my edge? And I was like touché. Makes perfect sense. Like, yeah, he shouldn't have. >> And now you have to be even more careful about protecting your edge, right? That's why I'm not talking about a lot of the stuff I'm doing. Whereas before, I would gladly broadcast what I'm doing. Right? That That That's so much more important now to protect your information edge. It's not have it be online and scrapeable by the LLMs, you know? Um and now I'm you know, I I I see the like the the pained look on your face. So, if you want to challenge that, I actually really want to >> it's it's piquing my interest cuz I'm sitting there like it's it's a it's a change of reality. Like it was so much about thought leadership, you know, sharing your inside, you know, secrets and stuff like that. But there it's going to be such a short-lived window of opportunity that kind of the trade secret model of like you're not going to patent it. You're not going to publish what you're doing. You're going to operate in silence for as long as you can to maximize the gain that you get. Because the moment it's public, the LLMs could scoop it up. Someone could ask a question and Open Claude or Claude could just build it. And you're just like >> Exactly. Exactly. I mean, what Another thing that I found interesting is, you know, when we're diligencing opportunities, we've spent a lot of time with experts on those expert network platforms. So, GLG is a popular one. AlphaSights is another popular one. And you're paying a ridiculous amount of money per hour to talk to these experts. For those who never worked here uh worked with these expert networks, I mean, you could be paying 500 to 1,000 to 1,500 dollars for an hour with someone, but they'll find you an expert. Like the world's expert in X or Y or Z, whatever you're trying to do within 48 hours. And you'll learn things that you're never going to learn by an LLM or Googling around. And um that just shows that there are going to be long-term limitations to doing research with these um LLMs. And so, one of my ideas was like, you know, could I just have Open Claude work with GLG and like run these calls for it. But there's still some limitation. Yeah, exactly. I I And it could probably do a lot of round one interviews, actually. Like if if money was no object, you would just have like you know, uh have a Opus 4.6 uh you know, put together a whole brief on the questions to ask all the experts and just like negotiate with the expert network on who to call and call them all and then ask the questions and then synthesize all of that and then come up with a round two of questions. And then do that. And then you might come in for round three. That would actually be maximally efficient. Um so, I thought about that. And I actually very well may uh build that for myself as well. Well, now you know that everyone's going to do it. >> >> No, it's fine. This is just a mechanism of doing work and research. And I don't think most people are actually going to do it because most people are lazy. Okay? Most people who listen to this aren't aren't going to actually put in the time and the effort to do these things. Um >> 100%. Then That's the saddest part of this content, you know? There's so much available content out there um on how to get better. Um but but still there's this follow-through component that's uh you know, there there's still the psychological gap for whatever reason, you know? I feel like um just riffing off the GLG idea, like the expert network idea. The problem I have with that is I feel the nuance of how people answer the questions. Now, granted, Opus is probably capable of picking it up. I'm not sure about this if I will interpret the impact as much when presented to me in text as I would having a connection with them uh on a call. I feel like that when I kind of hear something from someone like in terms of like an expert opinion I feel like there's a way that I can re-ask the question or poke and dive a little bit deeper that you know, Opus might not have that genuine curiosity to do so. Yes, I agree with you completely. And also, with all these calls, you know how you'll do like five expert calls to understand like how to invest in whatever, like pick your thing. Um you know, clean energy or solar, okay? You're doing five expert calls. Of those five expert calls, two of them are really amazing. All the three, they're okay. You got some information and you're happy with it. But it's really those top two that you want to talk to you more and schedule that second or third call with, right? So, at least, you know, your you know, AI could get you to that round two and and do what that analyst would have done for you. So, instead of hiring an analyst to have this first calls and pay a salary for that, you have AI do that, you know? That's true. Yeah, I see that's going to happen. I see a lot of I see a lot of recruiter products coming out uh promising that kind of that kind of stuff now. Yeah, totally. It's It's awesome. But um but anyway, we're we're now talking about the obvious and what everyone's going to be doing. Um so So, Jess, with you and and what you have going on, from everything you've experienced and the conversations that you're having at your level in Silicon Valley with the unicorn founders like what would be your advice that we haven't covered today for for founders that are in that build mode? Maybe they have a couple million ARR. Um they have a product that's been in market for a couple years. Like what's your advice to people like them? Um so, the folks who already have a few million ARR. I mean, if if they're if they're able to get to that point and deliver that because of AI, like I I don't think those people need as much wisdom as I >> AI. Like they're they're now they're they were pre-AI built product. Okay. >> with their harsh reality that someone could build their app in 30 minutes on a weekend. Oh, man, that's that's tricky. I mean, I think that's just as tricky as the other category, which is second time, third time founders who built their company in an older time with a lot of head count, and now their skill set is hiring and managing people and raising capital. That was really their area of leverage and unique impact. Um and I'm sure you know a lot of those people, right? Like they're so charismatic, they're great at raising capital, they're great at doing all these things. Um but um but yeah, they're kind of out of the loop now. I'd say like create a side hustle business that can get you a million in ARR and do it yourself. And do it in like under 10 hours a week, do it on the weekend, do it on nights. Whenever you can, if you can do that, that will give you the confidence that you can now pivot your business and adapt and change course um so that you survive uh the next 36 months. That's an interesting way to look at it. Like build so rather than like disrupt the entity as it is with AI, you're just go go fiddle and like experiment with a completely separate idea or product in kind of like a sandbox to test your theories before kind of migrating the team over to it. Yeah, because you want to have the confidence that you know what you're going to say before you disrupt 50 people's work. You know, you want to be able to say, "Hey, like look at what I've been doing and like you guys like we're not doing it right anymore and like I was able to you know, take on all these you know, I built and like you could also make your side project like a new expansion or you know, adjacent thing to your business. You know, that might be your idea just to showcase to your people, "Look at what I'm able to do." And so you're you're A, you're getting respect from your team that you're able to get your hands dirty with stuff. Um B, you make some extra side money, right? So this is your backup in case AI decimates your business and you have no investors and it's just money you got to put in your pocket. Um and C, um it's fun and you really get into it and then you learn how to learn in AI, which means watching the podcasts and you know, like all the nerdy like coding and design podcasts online and you know, you have to obsess with over that and learn that over the weekend in order to build the side projects. And you get into this loop over 90-day period of like learning, applying, learning, applying that you know now know how to teach the rest of your team on how to have that same learn apply framework. And then I ideally then you have your your team leaders, you know, creating personal development plans for every single person every month to help them level up their skill set. If and if they're far behind, then they're going to have to do extra work to learn how to get caught up. And they might not make it. And you know, I have people in my company who are not making it because they're not obsessing about learning and applying in their knowledge. Um but you know, everyone I work with now is is doing that and I think a lot of that is because I am doing this, right? Like I have these side projects that are just you know, I'm not spending a lot of time on and you know, I'm able to you know, make money on them. I I find that incredibly valid in terms of advice for founders. Uh whether it's like a whole separate company or like more of like build it yourself. Cuz I've run into that problem where it's like in my past companies I'm like "Build this, please." And then it's like "Well, okay, we'll add it to the backlog and da da da da da." It's like 3 months later. Um and now it's like, "I'm just going to do it myself. I'm just going to go to GitHub and I'm just going to write code this exact feature that I want." And it will be like 60, 80% of the way there and then I'll I'll be like, "Hey, look what I was able to do last night." Yeah. That changes the dynamic like, "Oh, Like you did that in a day?" I'm like, "Yeah. No, I did last night. It wasn't even a day. It was like 2 hours." And uh yeah, and then demoing it to the team. I think that demo culture uh is now uh like a pretty like as a must-have for for companies that really want to adopt AI is like have your team demoing um and showing off what they build because it gives a little bit more sense of pride and more momentum around it, but >> >> um Yeah. Well, before we transition out of this topic, I have a um the friend I was having lunch with yesterday who works at he was telling me how he is able to code extremely fast and release new product stuff immediately. Um like within 24, 48 hours. The bigger problem is how do you politically get everyone in the organization, all the stakeholders, bought in along the way. That's actually 80% of the time and the slowdown. So your So your engineering, you know, skill set is actually personally now leadership skill set. And like you know, trying to pull out feedback from people. And um That's interesting. >> that was really profoundly interesting. That definitely put like a yeah, especially for big orgs like yeah, again like founder coming in and stepping on everyone's toes or Yeah. um you know, mid-manager trying to like convince the who was who didn't do the job like it didn't do the work and it's like, "Why do we need like oh, well, that's not in our road map until like 2027." I was like, "But it's ready now." It's like having to manage uh the politics. Uh that unfortunately AI has not fixed. Maybe maybe one day when we just eliminate humans altogether then you know, it's probably more efficient. >> >> Then I guess there's no point I know. I know that is sad, but but this comes to show how like when you're starting from scratch on something and when you have a really small micro team that can you know, not have politics, that really does change the game for deliverability. So that's why now I think it's reasonable that these big public companies are you know, getting hammered. Um and they just can't move that fast. I mean, if you look at the like right here we have Salesforce Tower. Yeah. And the culture at Salesforce, you know, based on this is from friends who sold their companies to Salesforce, okay? This is not my opinion. This is their opinion. The opinion is it's really slow. It's really difficult to get your thing shipped. The matter review and stuff you have to go through, it's so hard and it it's reasonable why it is because it's all like big enterprise and you know, everything's got to be compliant and secure and you know, all the checks and boxes you have to go through, but um but then on top of that you also have the political buying you need along the way. Even without the the check marks and stuff cuz that part you could automate away with AI. >> Yeah. You know, but but the political buying is impossible. So it makes sense that you know, if you're starting from scratch it'll be better and so um if you could create smaller micro teams um in your business, um you'll move faster, but that means that if you're CEO, a big part of your job right now is trying to map out what is the future org structure of this company. Right? Like this concept of like just a broad engineering team, a broad product team and like just everything being like completely spread out like that where you have these choke points of approval. Um That and this is you know, again based on opinions from my other friends who are at these bigger companies who sold their bigger companies or are executives at companies like Cursor or OpenAI. You know, that's kind of where we need to move to. And I say, "Well, have you talked to these big companies like Salesforce or Meta or whoever to like get their opinion on how hard it is to shift into this new direction?" And I'll tell you the answer. The answer is there's a lot of resistance and it's really difficult to get them to do that because if they did that, they'd have to blow up their whole org, right? Like who you're reporting to will be different, right? Like the whole structure to change that at a fundamental level, that needs a top-down, you know, CEO board level um approach. You can't just have a middle manager say, "Okay, I agree like we should reorg this whole thing, you know?" So unless you as the CEO come up with this, it's just never going to happen. No. I think this is a really good note to to wrap on. I think this was a harsh reality, but also an opportunity for many uh you know, founders that it's like if you if put that extra time in, it sucks cuz like you know, you have to basically go back to work. You know, you have to really like go back to the early days, like the the zero to one days to address this. Yeah, and you know, we saw you know, we've covered some cases, but it's just like I I think without that tenacity and movement from leadership or the founders, it's nearly impossible. That's why Google's you know, that's why they came back. You know, founders of Google came back was like to get back in the mix cuz like they needed to draw they needed to have that level of singularity authority or singular authority to kind of push the needle um to to where they needed to and they're rapidly releasing like crazy. Like they're they're not behind. Uh well, maybe a little bit, but you know, still still quality coming out the door. Um but uh Jess, this has been an amazing, you know, show to have you on. I guess what would be the best way for founders or investors that are listening to this conversation that might want to follow you or connect with you? Yeah, just find me on LinkedIn. Um linkedin.com/in/jessicamahl and um send me a DM if you want to reach out and thanks for having me, Jason. Super fun to chat and I love these fruitful debates and I know this has sounded well, you know, a little gloom, but I am net net optimistic and I think everyone has the opportunity to be on the winning side of this whole conversation. 100% completely agree and thanks again for coming on and look forward to getting this out to our audience. Awesome. If you were inspired by today's episode, then go ahead watch this next episode. Promise it's worth it. And if you really enjoyed this last episode and you want to connect with the guest I had on today, make sure to leave a comment down below telling me why you would like an intro to this guest and I'll make it happen.