Tim DeSoto

I've had the pleasure of talking to a lot of journalists since our Series C announcement (https://lnkd.in/gwJFKNZT) The topic du jour is what will humans do with AI? It is the other way around. This isn't the age of upskilling—it's the age of reskilling. AI isn't a tool—it's a reset button. It will force humans up the value chain. AI can research better than any human in the world. Full stop. But research without action is a hobby. Hypo: You are running a large Accounting firm, and you need to grow inorganically. Old gen: hire a consulting firm that specializes in M&A to create a target list of firms to acquire. Next gen: o3 will build that list in 0.001% of the time, at 0.00001% of the cost, and will be 2x better. BUT AI isn't going to transact the deal for you. It's not going to approach the firm, build the trust, and make it a reality. That job is, and will be, reserved for people. AI is our chance to reimagine what humans should be doing. Not to hold on to what we've done.

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I’ve been covering new technology for over five years, and I believe it’s time to shed light on something deeply important that I’ve noticed. As a kid who grew up in California during the golden age of web startups, tech companies are what we all aspired to build. I grew up in an era where engineers were already considered cool. I still vividly remember sitting in an Entrepreneurship class in high school when the instructor had brought a successful alumni - a founder of multiple tech companies in Silicon Valley. He gave over an incredible monologue on the brilliance of SaaS businesses. (Keep in mind, this was before 99% of the world knew what a SaaS was). That 1-hour class has stuck with me ever since. But anyways, I am not making this post to reminisce about my childhood. I gave you that context so you know that I was raised in an environment that admired tech businesses. Facebook, PayPal, SnapChat, Instagram... And now, I am seeing something that I never expected: The traditional tech startup of the early 2000s is dead... Why? Because of AI. It has never been easier to build a tech company. One person, with barely any advanced technical skills, can now build a working product over a weekend. What once took a sleep-deprived team in a cramped apartment grinding for weeks… now takes a solo founder a couple of hours. And this isn’t just happening in tech. It’s happening in marketing. In e-commerce. In law. In *every industry*. AI and other technological advances have made it insanely easy to build - and more importantly - *scale a business*. So what does that mean? Well, it means we have entered the golden age to be an entrepreneur. But, only if you are able to shine in this one area: *Marketing* IF you are good at marketing, and you have an entrepreneurial spirit, it is your time to shine. Good marketers who understand social media are becoming millionaires selling ChatGPT wrappers. And this will continue to happen because software technology is already so impressive that very few people will actually be able to build something that will speak for itself. Distribution - storytelling - attention - that’s the game now. The best marketers of today will become the biggest CEO's of tomorrow! Anyways... I needed to get that thought out to the world. I hope you enjoyed my rant, and I always hope this inspires you to start taking modern forms of marketing more seriously.

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