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The AI Gold Rush and the Erosion of the Founder/Investor Relationship

The AI Gold Rush and the Erosion of the Founder/Investor Relationship

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Jake Crowley of Crowley-Capital spoke at our Online Investor Insights last week and focused, in part, on how transactional the investment process has become. It wasn’t all that long ago that, when  when he was our investor guest at the event, David Arcara of Laconia Capital , asked, “How often do you hear that getting into bed with an investor is like a marriage? It’s not. If a marriage goes south, you can get a divorce. When you get into bed with an investor, there is no divorce. You are stuck with that investor for the life of your company.” He advised that founders get to know the investors before signing on the dotted line, and to do due diligence on them as well.

”When you meet a founder for the first time and they tell you they want a term sheet by Friday, I always respond with, “Really? Aren’t you at least mildly curious if I’m a complete A-hole or not?” commented Tom Lazay in a LinkedIn piece.

Times have changed and on the heels of Jake’s remarks, Micah Rosenbloom of Founder Collective made the same observation and offered his insights in LinkedIn post, commenting that “VC used to be a marriage between an investor and a founder. Now, for some, it’s a series of one-night stands;-) Read More...

BuzzFeed and the AI Buzz Kill Coming Soon?

BuzzFeed and the AI Buzz Kill Coming Soon?

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Here’s a cautionary tale for you.

Before Mark Zuckerberg became the darling of the age of social, there was young (inexperienced) BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti, the Sam Altman of his day. When BuzzFeed launched two decades ago, it was the darling of the digital publishing world, “building its audience through listicles before expanding into a newsroom to challenge stalwarts like the New York Times,” noted MSN. Peretti was the genius who, as MarketWatch put it, “had seemingly cracked the code for social-media virality, and would soon become one of the first digital-media startups to achieve unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion.”

“Fast forward to 2026 and, for many, the result couldn’t have turned out worse. Gawker was forced to shut down under the weight of lawsuits, Vice Media filed for bankruptcy and is a shadow of itself, and BuzzFeed now warns it could go out of business entirely this year.” Read More...

A Tech Issue that’s Getting Old Fast

A Tech Issue that’s Getting Old Fast

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Bill Gates

With all the focus on AI these days, we tend to forget about that other tech obsession: youth.

Never mind the plastic surgeries or as The Wall Street Journal reports, “To combat fears of aging out of the workforce, men in tech are splurging on face-lifts, neck lifts and eyelid lifts, say plastic surgeons…Tech is a young person’s game.”

Unless you look at the fact: Read More...

The Real Startup Danger: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.

The Real Startup Danger: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.

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Image by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay

You’ve heard it a million times, but with the various AI assistants now available, has that changed?  It’s now much easier and affordable to found a startup, that’s for sure. Thanks to vibe coding and the like, you don’t even need a tech team or a team at all, or so it would seem.

Partner differences is one of the big reasons why startups fail. The new trend in the founding team? Having your AI as your co-founder.

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham gave an excellent masterclass a while back on why most startups quietly fail. While the tech landscape has changed considerably since he gave the talk, the basic advice hasn’t. Read More...

The Games People (in Big Tech) Play

The Games People (in Big Tech) Play

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Re the headline/lead-in, in the case of Microsoft, it’s a word game. Work with us here. The CEO of Microsoft “Suddenly not sounding too confident about AI not being a bubble,” Futurism reported. “Speaking at the World Economic Forum, (Satya) Nadella pontificated about what would constitute such a speculative bubble, and said that the long-term success of AI tech hinges on it being used across a broad range of industries — as well as seeing an uptick in adoption in the developing world where it’s not as popular, the Financial Times reports. If AI fails, in other words, it’s everyone else’s fault for not using it.”

“He also begged the public to stop using the term “slop,” the rapidly accepted new lingo for describing the shoddy text, images, and videos churned out by AI models. Nadella’s thesis seemed to be that we should stop being mean about AI as it refines its “jagged edges” — which could take a while, by his own admission.”

Fine. We’ll wait. Remember, a huge number of first-to-market Web 1 companies disappeared when the bubble burst. The internet didn’t go away then, either. Read More...

OpenAI and the Tooth Fairy

OpenAI and the Tooth Fairy

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Our friend and investor at ffvc, Katie Weiss, told a story in her weekly newsletter about her six-year-old daughter who had decided that the tooth fairy isn’t real, and how Katie used logic and Sora to “preserve the magic a little longer.”

“That whole exchange made me think about another type of “fairy tale”: projections. As a venture fund, we ask for them, fully aware that we’re often being handed a story only loosely tethered to reality. So why do we still value them? Why, like at home, do we try to keep the magic alive?

“Because the magic isn’t in the numbers, it’s in the mindset behind them. Hidden in those fictional spreadsheets are real signals: how a founder thinks, what they know, how they believe their business will evolve, and whether their vision holds up under pressure. If you know where to look, there’s a tremendous amount to learn from made-up numbers.” Read More...

Limbic Capitalism and the Age of AI

Limbic Capitalism and the Age of AI

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Image by Mircea Iancu from Pixabay

With AI advancing at breakneck speeds – 11% of the global population are using it – the real question is: is it fast approaching the point where we’re crossing the Rubicon and reaching the point of no return? Let’s be honest, we live in an age of limbic capitalism,  greatly accelerated by the Age of Social, and now AI. Limbic capitalism, according to danieldashnawcouplestherapy.com “refers to a system where businesses exploit human psychology, particularly the limbic system, to encourage excessive consumption and addiction. This concept highlights how modern capitalism increasingly targets emotional and psychological aspects of human behavior to maximize consumer engagement and spending. This practice involves more than just creating addictive products; it involves engineering environments, behaviors, and economies that trap both consumers and employees in cycles of dependence and harm.” And isn’t this the apotheosis of AI, especially when it comes to  LLMs?

Consider: says Futurism, “People Are Having AI “Children” With Their AI Partners. Case in point, new research published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans reveals the startling depths some users are plumbing in their relationships with AI chatbots.

“The level of romantic dedication people showed to their bots was startling, to say the least. Many participants told the researchers they were in love with their chatbot, which often involved roleplaying marriage, sex, homeownership, and even pregnancies. Read More...

What Escapes People about Holiday Networking Events

What Escapes People about Holiday Networking Events

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Image by Jason Goh from Pixabay

The holiday season is fast approaching, a season of joy for some, and depression for others. One of the key problems: loneliness. Dating apps have evolved from merely swiping left/right. AI matchmaking elements have been added as product enhancements, and curious what the results will prove to be over time, as we’re not quite convinced that an algorithm is capable of understanding human emotions on a granular level, and isn’t love part of the equation when looking for a life mate? Yes, you can check all of the boxes, but what a person wants and what they need are often two quite different things, trust us.

We’ve introduced nearly two dozen couples over the years, who would never have met otherwise. In most cases, the parties rejected our choices after the first meeting, yet did indeed marry, in most cases due to in no small part to trickery on our part. We will also mention that none of the pairings ended in divorce. Superconnectors like Yours Truly assess things differently.

Here’s something else to consider: tis the season of holiday movies and holiday parties. As to the first, here’s Your Complete 2025 Holiday TV Schedule — Hallmark, Netflix, Disney+, Lifetime And More. Holiday films are primarily about people finding their life partners in unlikely places and under unlikely circumstances. Case in point: our favorite holiday movie, Die Hard. Read More...

AI and the Easy Answer/Quick Fix Era

AI and the Easy Answer/Quick Fix Era

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Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

This week, a personal anecdote, with a lesson.

We were in LA last week for LA Tech Week, where we moderated our Investor Insights panel. Just before we left, we hurt the thumb of our dominant hand, and by ‘hurt,’ we mean broke the small bone at the tip of the digit. Which makes using a computer problematic and in attempting to maneuver everyday activities, we have a newfound empathy for those who are left-handed. Many tools are not made with them in mind.

Everyone we’d encountered dispensed advice: wrap it, splint it, take aspirin for the pain, ask AI. Or, see a doctor, which was the right advice and the way our life works, upon arrival at the hotel, our group assembled in the lobby. We were introduced to someone who was on the health panel that followed ours. We fist-bumped rather than shook hands, which roused his curiosity. We explained the issue. He asked if he could examine the finger and after identifying himself as being an orthopedic surgeon, yes, and what are the chances!!! He didn’t have an x-ray machine but had seen this injury often enough to know which bone was broken. He recommended naproxen over acetylsalicylic acid, and it would take about two months to fully heal. No splinting or wrapping it., as AI et al had recommended: that would inhibit the healing process and cause more damage than good. For the record, aspirin was counter-advised. It would take months to fully recover. Read More...

The Digital ID Issue No One Is Talking About

The Digital ID Issue No One Is Talking About

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

“Dozens of organizations had data stolen in Oracle-linked hacks,” TechCrunch reported. “Google said in a corresponding blog post that the hacking campaign targeting Oracle customers dates back to at least July 10, some three months before the hacks were first detected. Oracle conceded this week that the hackers behind the extortion campaign were still abusing its software to steal personal information about corporate executives and their companies. Days earlier, Oracle’s chief security officer claimed in the same post — since scrubbed — that the extortion campaign was linked to previously identified vulnerabilities that Oracle patched in July, suggesting the hacks were over.”

For the record, this hack “can be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.”

The Discord Hack Is Every Users Worse Nightmare. “Around 70,000 users’ personal data at risk. Hackers targeted a third-party company…in an effort to extort a ‘ransom,’ Discord said,” noted The Independent.  Both users ID photos and data were stolen. Read More...