i celebrate you

but our business priorities have changed

*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•

Hi friends, This week I wrote about the new start-up playbook: tiny teams, big revenue, fast growth, little need for VC funding. It has echoes of the piece I did in 2019 about start-ups rejecting venture capital and its hypergrowth playbook, preferring to control their destiny. AI is supercharging that option for a lot of companies.

It also is a bit ominous, because the start-ups being built today would have become the top employers of tomorrow, but they will likely need far fewer people. That is concerning! But as the story points out, plenty of these super lean start-ups are already hitting the point where they need more money and people. They’re just turning a nice profit first. There are a lot of things A.I. can supplement, but not do on its own, like sell enterprise software.

In past times this article would have generated a robust, interesting and fun debate among the start-up and V.C. people I associated with on Twitter. This time around some people engaged with the story, but it was tepid and the reactions were almost all positive / in favor of the trend.

Meanwhile over on Bluesky, responses were overwhelmingly negative and angry. (Also not clear anyone actually read the story.)

Just night and day apart.

And then, of course, we have the non sequitur that is LinkedIn. Whenever I share a story there, trying to gin up a conversation about it, the first response is almost always something like, “Yay! You wrote an article! I celebrate you! Good job at doing your job!” LOL. It’s sweet but not really the point.

Once upon a time, these reactions all lived together in the lively, awful, wonderful stew that was Twitter. Now we have X and X hates links. X prefers a TikTok-like algorithm of viral hits or flops. There are no more in-between conversations within the community of followers some of us spent years cultivating.

It’s a bummer. I would love to see some of those start-up people who are congratulating each other about the article on X to respond to some of the Bluesky people who reflexively trashed them with little understanding of the situation. And I think some of the Bluesky trash-talkers could help those start-up people learn a little more self-awareness about how people outside their bubble are reacting to what they’re building.

Maybe that’s a naive version of what social media ever was. But that’s how I remember it at its best.

In other news

On the HUMANE-ity. Humane, the Ai pin start-up, has really shown us the full Silicon Valley circle of life, from a mysterious and stealthy new hardware project to a hyped and buzzy launch to a total faceplant of a roll-out to a sad firesale for less than half of what it raised, all in less than 2 years. I covered all of it:

The launch: Humane’s Ai Pin will one day replace smartphones. This story had dolphins, monks, big-name investors, TED talks, supermodels, an $850 million valuation and oatmeal cookies.

The flop: Reviewers brutally trashed the device. This story had batteries overheating, fire risk, ice pack demos, disappointing sales, internal strife and relentless positivity.

The sale: Anyone still using their $700 device learned they had a couple weeks before it would turn into a brick, with all their data deleted. “Our business priorities have changed,” the company said. I’m doubtful most investors and employees will get anything for their stock. Ouch.

In other other news

📈 I also wrote about the IPO market.

Important Business Matters

Startup everyone’s into: Tiny teams!

Startup everyone’s over: All the stocks. Investors are pessimistic and “risk on.”

Reason to go on living: AI is changing coding but not eliminating it as a job.

Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: Lies about USAID.

Latest crush: The AP is fighting the White House on First Amendment grounds.

Latest heartbreak: The mission is the new tenderloin.

Latest thing the kids are into: Celebrity news is the gateway to the red pill.

Latest thing the olds are into: Creepily repeating peoples’ names.

a dall-e summary of this newsletter:

“a tale of 2 social networks!”

*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•

Thanks for reading, buddies! If you enjoy EGTttHoB™ please forward it to all of your BFFs. There's also a "like" button you can hit somewhere on this email.

If you are a new reader and wondering, wtf this is, well, welcome. Here is slightly more information.