Rob Cheng

If you know anyone who wants a guest to talk about the Tenet/Pool/Rubin situation -- this is the one thing I am most qualified to talk on. Influence ops, the role agencies play in dark money and astroturfing etc. I can talk about how they do it, from strategy to tactical to how they approach people and the tactics they use. I literally ran this experiment using myself as a crash test dummy. Needless to say, it kinda backfired, because I had no idea a) the extent of the problem b) how damaging it would be and c) how uninterested people were when I talked about the problem.... until it affects people they personally don't like. I am a little frustrated and depressed about dedicating so many years to this specific thing so that when it did explode and the conversation occurred, that I would be front of mind. It seems I failed there, mostly because by simply talking about these sorts of things - platform manipulation, influence ops etc - I found myself mass reported into oblivion so that nobody sees me. So this is me offering to be on any things, talking about the systemic problems with independent media, and content creation and the reforms that need to occur. I don't regret it, because it led me to deciding to practice law. But I'm serious... this is my lane and I can talk about it.

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Have you ever looked for theory that can answer - how to approach investors - what kind of product to build first - how you’ll defend the company against competitors This new article from CDA partner, Kevin Maney extends Steven Johnson's writing from the book Emergence to #CategoryDesign. All #Startups and #VentureCapital teams should dig in. (link to article in comments)

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https://lnkd.in/gN6xuBw6 Andrej Karpathy, who worked directly under Musk, explains 4 ways Elon runs his companies differently 👇 1. Staff Small Highly Technical Teams 2. Maintain Vibrant Workplace 3. Minimize Management Layers 4. Remove Bottlenecks Seems simple enough no? #elonmusk #twitter #management #businessconsulting #genius

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Perfecting your product and GTM strategy are surely important. But Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie argues there's one factor that outweighs all others in startup success: recognizing and capitalizing on tech and macro tailwinds. Fighting against them? You're setting yourself up for failure. Our full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gEAPFR-A

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My approach to AI: Balance human intelligence with technology. AI has the power to radically reduce the amount of mundane tasks humans have to complete. This enables folks at every level of the revenue hierarchy to spend more time on strategic and value-add work. CROs should take the time to imagine AI managing revenue-generating processes that, until now, were too vast and complex for humans to even attempt. At the same time, it’s essential to maintain the human intelligence and relationship-building that drives decisions. It’s a tricky balance. But one we have to get right.

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Out of curiosity, I sent a document to five different AIs looking for final edit recommendations and the rationale behind why. * Claude * GPT * Mistral * Llama * Gemini Each had its own style from nuanced to radically different edits, to overlooked items such as a missing CTA. All had valid advice. The experience was almost like walking into a room of copywriters with a lawyer quietly sitting in the corner making sure that everyone stays in line, and asking what version is best. I then merged all five, extracting the best of the best and creating a new beast, created by five independent AIs. That was about 25 pages of composed copy and history and rationale behind all changes and revisions. The longest run was about 15 seconds to create the new merged document. the results are cleaner using a single LLM as it is on its train of thought but may have overlooked something important. Where a technique like this may become quite interesting is in legal contracts. What happens if I ask multiple AIs to extract the best terms for a client in an iron-clad contract drawing on 100 similar contracts, analyzed by multiple LLMs, and then the results merged and fine-tuned...prior to human review?

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It's funny because it's true. If your Compound AI system has tokens and embeddings as its main abstractions, your RAG can't tell the difference between an intern's hottake and what is actually going on. Unfortunately, the solution proposed by so many research papers and frameworks is some LaTeX-formatted version of 'just call ChatGPT again and ask if this answer makes sense.' AI needs better abstractions.

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Business model innovation around Retrieval Augmented Generation from O'Reilly -- they have indexed all the content on Safari and are using it to provide answers grounded in vetted and credible content (their unique sauce). Another innovation here is to credit/compensate authors for the fraction of their work used in a generated answer. While this is progress, the more well-grounded the summaries look, the more dangerous the inevitable mistakes will be -- irrelevant documents will still lead to misleading summaries, and there will still be hallucinations because of interpolations with the text used to train Llama. At least based on the article, I don't see them employing self-checks or guardrails. I hope those are coming. https://lnkd.in/gqqHiR2D

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"Within a specific domain, how can you improve imagination and creativity? I think you have to alternate between imitation behaviors and open-play behaviors." While I don't yet know if I agree completely with Venkat's definitions of imagination and creativity, I found this article insightful and interesting - both in terms of my own creative development and in terms of what might be possible with AI. 🔗 Full Article: https://lnkd.in/eAdX27P2 🔗

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Are you going to re:Invent this year? Is AI strategy top of mind? I’m carving out time for 1:1 conversations with technology and business leaders who are ready to run. Whether you're building, scaling, or strategizing, let's discuss. 🎲 Also open to discussing best practices to identify and exploit +EV table games without getting banned 🎲

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Excited to announce that Stigg has raised $17.5M in Series A funding! 🎉 Stigg is revolutionizing how software companies build and manage pricing models by introducing the first unified monetization platform for engineers. On a personal level, the story of Dor Sasson and Anton Zagrebelny is super interesting and inspiring, all the way from early ideation and co-founder search, to the exceptional product Stigg is today, and the exceptional team that makes this magic happen!

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The Procreate team and CEO are getting absolutely roasted on the internet right now, but are they actually deploying a brilliant strategy? ICYMI: Procreate’s CEO came out and said he f-ing hates generative AI, and that they will never add the technology into their products. People are calling it a Kodak moment. Saying they will get left behind with technology. That the time is ticking until their demise. But is this REALLY a bad strategy to deploy? Simon Sinek became famous for telling businesses to start with “the why”. If their “why” is that they believe that creativity is an innate human characteristic and “all creativity starts with humans,” then could this actually be a wise move? Aside from the fact that they painted a villain of something that most of the world believes is the future, and they went viral because of it. They are also making heroes of their raving fans. And their raving fans love it. They’re saying thank you. Procreate deeply understands their customer and shaped the business around them (their pricing model is another good example of this). Most of the tech and business community are the ones that are shaming them. But I believe that when most zig, you should zag in marketing. It’s an easy way to differentiate. There are far too many companies now that are staring down the barrel of a difficult earnings call and simply saying that they are releasing AI products and functionality. They say this with legacy technical debt, without a team that can build said functionality, and without understanding how to deploy AI at scale. (And as a CMO of a company born as a true AI company that is doing this well in the enterprise, this is annoying). There’s going to be a market for people who believe in this same “why”. Maybe they don’t end up first in market share in the long term, but there’s definitely a strong place for them.

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🎙 🎧 All things #productleadership & #executiverecruiting with Chris Johnson, Founder & Managing Partner of Artisanal Talent! That's the next episode of Product Leader's Journey which drops this coming week. In this short, Chris talks about the relevance of domain experience in hiring. We cover many important topics in the full episode about how to craft a well structured narrative about your experience, addressing weak spots on the resume, and more! Watch this space!

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3 years of pricing lessons at Equals condensed into one blog post. Since starting the company, we've tinkered a lot with pricing and packaging. It's one of the single most impactful levers early stage companies can pull. I think folks *don't* experiment with pricing enough, or take big enough bets when they do. We've tried free. We've tried completely sales led. We've tried not listing pricing on the site. Matt Hodges details all the plans we've had, why, and what we've learned in our latest installment on Wrap Text. https://lnkd.in/ecckEDba

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AI is reshaping GTM strategies, but it's not just about automation - it's about enhancing human capabilities and improving the customer experience. At Pear VC's Zero to $1m conference, I got to chat (and debate 😏)with some awesome folks on how AI is transforming GTM: - Amanda Kahlow (1mind) brought her AI assistant Mindy, showing how AI can provide immediate, personalized responses to prospects: "Think about the world in a new paradigm where we could meet the buyers immediately the minute they lean in and say I'm interested." - Zach Vidibor (Octave) stressed the importance of empathy in sales: "AI now means I have 10 times as many competitors shipping 10 times as fast saying a lot of things that all sound the same. The best way to differentiate is have highly empathetic people that really understand our customer problems." - Everett Berry (Clay) highlighted the emergence of the "growth operator" role: "The most important role for early stage companies is the growth operator role, someone who sits in the cockpit and has AIs do things for them." - Kathleen Estreich (Pear VC) touched on the blurring lines between traditional GTM functions: "I think those lines are blurring more and more in this AI world of go-to-market." Key takeaways: 1. The buying experience is evolving. Buyers want to do a ton of education first and then talk to an empathetic human. 3. Human creativity is more important than ever to stand out. 4. Data quality and management are essential for effective AI use. 5. AI is dramatically changing content creation and repurposing. 6. The role of SDRs is evolving, but human touch remains important. 7. AI tools should enhance, not replace, human decision-making. 8. Personalization at scale is becoming achievable. 9. The "full stack seller" concept is re-emerging. 10. AI is enabling more efficient use of data. The panel seemed to agree that the future of GTM lies in finding the right balance between AI-powered efficiency and human-driven empathy and creativity. Thanks for hosting Pepe Agell, Ana Leyva and the whole Pear VC team! Full video here! https://lnkd.in/genDfTCV

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With 1H entering final few weeks, highly recommend this operating model. ( Finance and Sales ) + ( Product and Marketing ) The Cadence will help bring order to the chaos of QBRs, Product Release, Campaigns, Field Events, and getting as many people to "The Beach" as possible. Two Quotes: 💰 "There is a time for everything" ~ King Solomon 🎶 "And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me" ~ Rolling Stones When coaching front line leaders or running project management for some back-office initiative, calendar and time management is critical for operating efficiencies. https://lnkd.in/g9HAtsT

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This is a great read by Sachin Rekhi that outlines the deliberate startup methodology. If you want to learn more - join me while I facilitate his Finding PMF course where we cover the methodology in depth, including case studies. Link to the course in the comments.

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"THE BEST OF LIFE HAPPENS IN THE MARGINS." 📖 Think of a printed book. It is filled with words, photos, and charts. Now, imagine the margins. The publisher left these blank so you could add notes or digest the material with less clutter. Now imagine your life. We spend most of our lives managing the "printed" content—our jobs, families, and various obligations. There's nothing wrong with that. It's unavoidable, reasonable, and necessary. But what about the margins? The margins—that ten-minute drive to run an errand with your kids. The time spent standing in the queue at a register. What do you write into your margins? Life happens in the margins. I've been chewing on that concept lately. Think about the eulogy of a loved one—or a cherished memory. It rarely happens in the "pages" of the book we write. Most often, it occurs in the margins—an unprompted phone call, a thoughtful remark, or a timely word of encouragement—that brief moment where we were invited to add our notes on the pages of someone else's life. What about you? What takes up your margins? Are the margins a space for others to write the notes of their lives on the pages of your book, or is it yet another time slot to get more done? How will people remember the margins of your life? PS: I'd love to hear what tips and practices you're using to protect and wisely steward the margins of your life. Help! ⬇️🥺🙏

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