59) Next Steps

Behind-the-scenes building Vambrace AI, a company on a mission to figure out its mission. Please pardon the stream-of-consciousness style. Subscribe to follow along or visit the site here:

(typos are to make sure you’re paying attention)

Introductory Remarks

Dear Vambracers —

In last week’s post, AI Washing, I talked about the incentives that underpin the urge to “AI Wash” within the current corporate environment. Specifically, there’s a market premium associated with being perceived as AI-forward, and companies are behaving in a manner consistent with their economic incentives. I do think we’ll need to start seeing some more meaningful AI-related economic impact for companies to warrant continued investment—and I think that segues nicely into the topic of today’s post. Some news!

Next Steps

I recently accepted a job as an AI Strategist with Tenex. The past few months have been particularly trying for me as I grappled with the realities of being a solo founder in a crowded space. I really love the actual requirements of the job: mapping technical solutions to organizational impact; explaining complex topics to a variety of technical and non-technical stakeholders; thinking about the business case for some automation; working to evangelize and drive adoption; and grappling with the abundance of challenges posed by production-grade AI systems. I really couldn’t have asked for a more learning-oriented and challenging past 12 months.

With that said, I realized a few things:

• I’m really not an engineer. With the advent of AI-assisted coding tools, I can sort of cosplay as an engineer—and I do have a fairly technical background rooted in statistics and data science. But hardcore engineering really doesn’t make my heart sing. I enjoy it insofar as I’ve been able to learn fundamental concepts associated with software development and how we see what we see on our machines—which up until this point felt like voodoo. So that’s been a wonderful learning journey, and one that I expect to stay on indefinitely. But at the same time, when I think about how I can best allocate my time, I think I’m really good at quickly diagnosing business challenges and then understanding how available technology can be used to help ameliorate those challenges and/or accelerate advantages.

• Solo founding is lonely. Bootstrapping a company by yourself is very lonely. I’m glad that I did it this way, since it was really nice to not have any true external non-customer stakeholders to answer to, but also I think it’s just a very isolating and lonely journey. I was sort of at the point where I either needed to hire an engineer, bring on a co-founder, or start to think about what’s next—and ultimately I decided to think about what’s next. I’ve also been in a fully remote working environment for almost 5 years now, and candidly I think that’s taken a real toll on my overall social wellbeing. I want to be in an office. I want to feel the energy associated with a physical collective. I want to enjoy pleasantries and informal interactions with peers. And I think we’re all sort of collectively still figuring this stuff out, and so being in a more intellectually dynamic and diverse environment will be conducive to solving hard problems and coming up with creative solutions.

• Crowded space & first mover advantage. There is undoubtedly a ton of demand for AI consulting services, generally, and so I benefitted from that. But the demand has brought about intense competition, and there are frankly tons of people in the space. Given that environment, I do think that brand matters and that there will be a flight to quality for the largest organizations. Within that competitive environment, there is a real first mover advantage and then a real benefit from brand and distribution. Enter: Tenex.

• Tenex. Tenex was founded by Arman Hezarkhani (s/o CMU) and Alex Lieberman (Morning Brew) nearly a year and a half ago, and I think they’ve done a great job of building strong brand and distribution within the space. That distribution has allowed them to capture many key accounts, build a large (and rapidly growing) team, and to compete aggressively for market share in the space—and I think they’re doing a great job. I was lucky to spend some time in the office recently as I wind down my existing client work, and there is a real energy and vibe associated with a company on the rise that I haven’t really felt before. All of this is to say that it really felt (and feels) like an opportunity that I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) pass up.

So, all of these factors drove me to the decision and I’m so excited to finally officially announce the move. I will be honest, the past year has been super difficult and way more intense than I think I even realize. I’ve been in a near-constant state of stress, especially within the past few months, and so I need to spend some time to unwind and decompress.

But I’m also incredibly grateful to have taken the bet on myself and make the leap into this new category when it wasn’t yet clear how big it would be or how in demand AI-related consulting services would be. I’m proud of the work I’ve done for clients, the relationships that I’ve formed with real business-owners, and the courage I had to start in the first place.

I feel more motivated and energized than ever that I’ll be able to continue having an impact and be an active participant in the adoption layer of this cutting edge technology for years to come. There are real challenges ahead, and I’m ready to dive headfirst into them as they arise, and to work with like-minded and talented peers to help drive real results for real companies.

Looking Forward

Thanks for following along on the journey! I start in two weeks, and so I’m going to take the next two weeks—and then I’m going to figure out if and how I want to reorient this platform. I might pursue broader AI-related writing, or maybe I’ll just shut it down entirely. I guess only time will tell. But I’m fairly certain that this won’t be the last time I write regularly.

Have a great week and an even better rest of your summer!

Sincerely,

Luke