1) Introducing: Vambrace AI

Behind-the-scenes building Vambrace AI, a company on a mission to forge stronger relationships with users. Subscribe to follow along here:

Introductory Remarks

Dear Vambracers —

This officially marks the launch of Vambrace AI, a user insights company that aims to enable more meaningful and actionable relationships with users. It’s still quite early in the journey and I’m sure there will be countless changes between now and “success,” so I thought it would be fun to chronicle that thinking and the broader development of the platform here. I intend to use this platform to be a more informal snapshot of how I go about actually building and growing a company—spinning up an MVP, finding initial users, talking to them, getting punched in the face, etc. But as a warning I don’t intend for this platform to be super polished—I don’t have the time nor the energy for that. So please read if you feel inclined to do so and let’s see if we can’t construct something that eventually resembles a unicorn. 🫡 

Background & Overview

Without going into much detail, I was fortunate (and, in some ways, unfortunate) to be raised in an entrepreneurial family. I spent most of my formative years admiring founders, builders, and creators around me—without consciously realizing it. This upbringing instilled the belief that I had the capacity to build something of my own. And recent shifts in the technology landscape have compelled me to finally take the leap. I’m not sure what this will become, and I’m sure it will be unimaginably difficult, but I’ve also never felt more confident that it’s what I’m meant to do.

The purpose of this newsletter specifically is to discuss challenges and learnings on the super-early entrepreneurial path. By way of background, I spent about 3.5 years in early-stage consultative investment banking—which exposed me to some foundational business principles—followed by a brief stint working in an early startup, and then most recently a little over 3 years as an early-stage venture investor. Throughout my career, I’ve developed many strong beliefs about how companies ought to be built. But I also know that I’ve never really had the opportunity to practice and live my beliefs. I aim to do that with this endeavor.

But enough about me; let’s get to the core idea space I’m exploring. Charlie Munger said, “take a simple idea and take it seriously.” My simple idea is that, currently, user interview workflows for startups and SMBs are fragmented and non-actionable. Further, I contend that the single most important driver of early-stage business success is how well you know your customer / user. So then why don’t we have more effective and insightful ways of centralizing and deriving insights from the conversations that we have with our users? That’s really the core of it.

I believe several other technology and business dynamics will amplify this simple insight:

• AI makes human interaction more important: AI is a transformative technology. It’s never been easier to generate and interact with custom content—content that passes the Turing Test; and it really does feel magical. In the intermediate term, I think AI will slowly engulf all manual (and most complex) tasks in society. This is scary to some, but I find it exciting. In a world where the actual gears of civilization are effectively on auto-pilot, what it means to be human will change. My personal belief is, ultimately, ubiquitous penetration of AI will actually reveal that what it really means to be human is to feel, to love, to empathize, to interact with, and to really see the soul of another organic creature—imperfection and all. So I’m a big believer of tools that keep humans at the center and amplify or strengthen those relationships. But at least for the next decade or so I don’t think robots will effectively replace what it really feels like to look another person in the eyes.

• AI enables and will accelerate business formation: AI’s transformative potential will also disrupt the general business landscape, and compel many more folks to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors (as is the case with me). I believe this will accelerate new business formation, increase total number of businesses, reduce average team sizes, increase average revenue per employee, etc., etc. And the actual business insight here being that solopreneur and SMB-oriented tools will benefit from these tailwinds.

• Opportunity to disrupt enterprise-oriented incumbents: And, building off that, there are a lot of tools in and around customer success and user discovery that are enterprise-oriented and prohibitively expensive for these new upstarts. I hope to serve these new upstarts and other existing SMBs. (I think this is also consistent with a broader race to the bottom due to an abundance of intellect.)

Only time will tell if these dynamics prove to be true and if they serve as tailwinds to what I’m building—but I’d rather try to catch the waves than see them crash on by.

And finally, the name: Vambrace. I think sometimes inspiration just strikes you from out of nowhere and you have to follow it with reckless abandon. My favorite author is a Canadian named Robertson Davies and about a year ago I devoured his trilogy of trilogies: the Salterton, Cornish, and Deptford Trilogies. I particularly enjoyed the Salterton Trilogy, which was his first one. That trilogy contains a Vambrace family: Pearl and Walter Vambrace. I was trying to think of chatty characters and Pearl’s name came to my mind (although truthfully I don’t think she’s uniquely gossipy).

I then looked up “vambrace” and saw it was basically a wrist shield in medieval armor—and that lends itself to all sorts of metaphorical heft around strengthening relationships between you, your product, and your consumers—assuming in this case, I guess, that your product is the sword and your customers are your enemy? (You know what I mean.) But the point being that you fortify the part of your body that holds your weapon with a vambrace.

And then finally the character’s name is Pearl, and so then all sort of pearl-related puns reveal themselves around discovering insights about your users. One of my favorites: “A pearl is a treasure born from darkness.” And so that inspired the name of our core chatbot, “Pearl,” in a very organic-feeling manner.

Learnings Thus Far

#1) AI is fire (pun intended)

The technology environment is a huge driver for me in finally taking this type of leap. I’ve started (semi-comically) comparing AI to the discovery of fire—and that really is how significant it feels.

AI began as a curiosity in Fall 2022 with the initial launch of ChatGPT, and it wasn’t quite across the uncanny valley then. But the rate of exponential improvement has been insane and I think we have to operate under the assumption that the underlying AI models will only continue to get exponentially better, cheaper, faster, etc. And so if you assume even a modest rate of continued exponential improvement—then we have no idea how magical this technology will eventually feel.

The vast majority of the work I’ve done thus far in building an actual MVP has been made possible by AI. When I first was ideating something in this area, I talked with ChatGPT about how to actually architect software, and think through what the core function of the platform would be, etc. And then I was able to ask literally hundreds of embarrassingly simple questions to the model, which helped me gain at least some understanding of how things work. And so I think that the personalized teacher-student relationship that AI enables is incredible.

And then the actual code generation tools like Windsurf and Cursor have been insane. I spent most of my professional life with many entrepreneurial ideas (most of them terrible) and feeling helpless since I didn’t have a technical co-founder. Now I don’t claim to be a technical co-founder now, but I’m definitely not not technical now, and that’s gotta count for something.

#2) It’s so much easier to tell people what to do than to actually do it

Coming from the venture world (which I do love), I’ve talked to nearly thousands of startups and founders and have built pretty strong beliefs around how pre-seed to seed-stage companies should operate. I understand the general trajectory that companies aim for and I know the general capital requirements associated with that trajectory. I understand core early-stage business strategy. I know how to evaluate a company’s potential based on how well the founder knows their users, how a product compares to existing solutions, etc. etc. But it’s one thing to intellectually and conceptually know all of this stuff—and it’s a whole ‘nother thing to actually have to live it.

A concrete example: a common theme in the startup world is launch before you feel ready; and that’s something I’d always tell founders. “You can’t build something in a vacuum, you have to actually interact with the world.” Boy oh boy, those words were so easy to say, but they have proven much more difficult to live. Just this past week I’ve been pushing towards finishing my MVP (end of May targeted launch) and I talked with a mentor who explicitly said “you just need to launch.” And I realized in that moment that I had veered away from a core principle that I told so many people. It’s amazing how cognitively dissonant we can be when our own mind is involved.

But I think the real takeaway for me here is not to overcome my cognitive dissonance, which I think is largely impossible, and rather to keep surrounding myself with people who will force me to check my implicit beliefs and keep me honest with myself. This means having conversations that might be uncomfortable, talking to that person who thinks your idea is stupid, continuing to put yourself out there especially when you don’t want to. Because otherwise you can construct an artificial palace of self-rightness and live life as a deluded-yet-absolute ruler of your own kingdom. And that’s scary!

#3) Humility and optimism in the face of constant embarrassment

Consistent with the above, I think a lot of entrepreneurship (and life) is resilience and optimism in the face of continued disappointment and failure. I have to condition myself to actually seek pain and discomfort—because that’s where I’ll find growth. But it is so difficult to actually live this out day in and day out—and I’m only like a little over a month in! I think we’re raised to think that comfort is good, and to seek comfort, but that softens us. And so with this journey, and in life, I’m trying to force myself to be as uncomfortable as possible. That means forcing myself to talk to that person who I think will hate my product; that means earnestly identifying all the other companies already in your space that could crush you at a moment’s notice; that means not getting discouraged when someone you admire dismisses your idea.

And it also means becoming okay with embarrassment and putting yourself out there. It’s kind of an embarrassing proposition a bit—at least for someone who can be bashful. At its core, the formation of any company implies that the founder thinks they can create something better at serving the needs of some group of people better than anything that’s ever been created. And there’re so many things that have been created all throughout human history. So it’s a little bit scary to really believe that you can make something that a lot of people want. But that’s also the joy in it, I suppose.

#4) Insanity is the superpower

Deciding to start a company feels intensely quixotic. Nobody tells you to do it—and nobody is there to give you constant encouragement and support. You’re just deciding to do this really hard thing because you decided that that’s what you’re going to do. Of course, in most cases the founder would claim that they felt compelled to do because of some massive problem they see in the world, or because of some piece of their childhood experiences, or whatever—and that’s true in my case, by the way. But, still, nobody actually tells you to turn that drive or insight into a company. You have to decide to do it. And then you have to maintain that illusion to yourself and others each and every day—ad infinitum—until eventually maybe one day you look around and see yourself surrounded by a team, serving real customers, generating real revenues. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it there but I sure hope I do.

And so I think what I intend to say here is that, it really feels kind of crazy—and it’s not like I’m insulated from the craziness. I know it seems crazy. It’s a fundamentally audacious thing to say you’re doing. But that insanity is actually the superpower, because you need some fuel to keep you going even and especially when things feel the most hopeless.

#5) Learning is fun and software is simple (well, kinda)

The last quick thing: it’s been so fun to start to peak under the hood of how software is built. It always felt so opaque and arcane—and now that I have ChatGPT and Windsurf by my side I’m really starting to build some intuition around how it all flows. There’s still so much that I don’t know, but the small kernels of understanding and plateau-hopping has been so exciting.

Looking Forward

Moving forward, I aim to publish an article weekly. They will vary in length, heft, and impact—but I intend to remain consistent. There’s so much going on in the space and so much going on in my head that putting finger to key once a week helps clarify thought and crystalize beliefs. I’m also a believer in a build-in-public attitude and think that this type of endeavor helps develop and fortify “brand.” And I think authentic brand identity will be a real moat in a world of abundant technology.

As I mentioned at the beginning, my main focus is that I enjoy this—and that means I may compromise on elegance of prose (which was never really my strength anyway). I intend to make up for occasional incoherence with honesty and whimsy.

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Sincerely,

Luke