Large Language Model (LLM)

A Large Language Model (LLM) is an AI system trained on massive amounts of text to predict the next token in a sequence. The prediction capability scales into broader abilities (reasoning, code generation, analysis, conversation, translation, summarization) as models grow in size and training data. Modern frontier LLMs range from 70 billion to 1+ trillion parameters and are the technology underlying ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, and other generative AI products that have transformed software since 2022. It's the specific type of foundation model that handles text.

What LLMs actually do (the mechanics):

Tokens, not words: LLMs break text into tokens (sub-word units). "Tokenization" of a sentence might produce 10-...

Cofounders & Team

The people side of building a company. This cluster covers founder roles and dynamics, the executive lineup, the hiring sequence, sales and customer success roles, compensation and equity, performance management, layoffs and severance, and the culture and operations that determine whether the team holds together. 63 entries.

If your business succeeds or fails on hiring (most do), this is the cluster you live in.

Founder roles and titles

• [Founder], the origin role; once a founder, always a founder.
• [Co-founder], when more than one founder; team dynamics nuance.
• [CEO and Founder], title combination and the transitions.
• [Solo Founder], building without a cofounder.
• [Technical Cofounder], engineering-led cofounder profile.
• [B...

Generative AI

Generative AI is the category of AI systems that create new content (text, images, code, audio, video, 3D) rather than classifying or analyzing existing data. The November 2022 release of ChatGPT marked the cultural and commercial inflection point that transformed generative AI from research curiosity to mainstream technology used by hundreds of millions of people within months. It's the category of AI that produces output rather than just labels or predictions.

The pre-ChatGPT history (compressed):

2014: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) introduced. First major generative image breakthrough.

2017: Google's "Attention is All You Need" paper introduces the Transformer architecture (the foundation for modern LLMs).

2018: Op...

Business Strategy

Business strategy is the integrated set of choices that determines how a company creates and captures unique value. It includes which markets to serve (and which to exclude), how to position relative to competitors, what to build vs buy vs partner for, how to win in chosen markets, and what trade-offs to accept. The discipline is making explicit choices that produce a differentiated position rather than defaulting to generic "be excellent everywhere" non-strategy that produces no actual competitive advantage. Strategy is choices; without choices, there's no strategy.

What strategy actually is (per Michael Porter and others):

Choices about scope:

• Which customer segments to serve.
• Which geographies to operate in.
• Which prod...

Foundation Model

A foundation model is a large-scale AI model trained on broad, diverse data and designed to be adapted to many downstream tasks. Adaptation happens via fine-tuning, prompting, or API access. The term was coined by Stanford's Center for Research on Foundation Models in 2021 and now describes GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, and similar models that form the base layer of the modern AI stack. The foundation model is to AI applications what AWS is to web applications: shared infrastructure that powers everything built on top.

What distinguishes foundation models:

Scale: hundreds of billions to trillions of parameters. Trained on hundreds of billions to trillions of tokens of data.

General-purpose training: trained on broa...

What is customer segmentation?

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing a large group of customers into smaller groups, based on certain characteristics. It’s also sometimes called “market segmentation.”

Why is customer segmentation important?

Customer segmentation is important because it helps companies market more effectively to their customers. If you want your marketing budget to go as far as it can, it’s essential that you know who you’re marketing to and what they respond to when it comes to advertisements.

For example, if your company had a customer base that included both 14-year-old boys and 45-year-old men, you wouldn’t use the same marketing techniques with the two groups, would you? But you can’t even know that you have ...

Selecting the right growth agency for your startup can make or break your startup. The wrong pick can lead to months of pain and wasted resources. The right selection can rocket your startup through the rungs of growth.

Over the years, I have run an agency and worked with dozens of agencies. I’ve pretty much seen it all when it comes to marketing service companies. It’s also something I get asked a lot when speaking with founders, how do you find the right agency for your startup?

So, I have written my key criteria every startup founder should consider when researching, speaking to and selecting their next growth agency.

Startup-specific experience When hiring a startup growth agency, make sure the agency specialises in startup growth. It ...

Being a Founder has always been a lonely experience. So how is it that with a million ways to connect to each other, we've never been more lonely?

In the past couple of years when I sit down with Founders in person, I always ask how well they are maintaining their personal relationships. In the past few years, I've noticed a significant downward trend where more Founders are finding themselves more isolated from the world around them.

Being a Founder was always isolating, but this trend really concerns me.

We used to live in a world where we were surrounded by co-workers by day, out with friends and loved ones at night, and having conversations on the phone with those we couldn't connect with in person.

Since then, we've begun to build a ...

Guessing is Not a Successful Sales Strategy. Create an ideal customer profile instead.

Think your product is “for everyone”? That’s cute. It’s also a ticket to early stage startup hell.

One of the top reasons startups fail (42%!) is building something nobody actually needs. Translation: they never clearly defined who their real customer was. In startup post-mortems you’ll hear the haunting refrain: “no market need.”

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the antidote to that fate. It’s the crystal-clear picture of who truly needs what you’re selling. An ICP helps in qualifying leads effectively, ensuring your sales and marketing teams focus on the target audience.

Without it, you’re basically playing darts blindfolded and hoping for a bullseye...

What an exciting moment! You’re looking to scale up your startup and need to bring in a growth agency to help you do that. But, it’s a big decision. Choosing the wrong agency will lead to months of delayed growth, thousands of dollars in wasted spend, and difficult conversations down the line trying to understand where it all went wrong.

This means it is vitally important you make the right decision from the get-go. There are hundreds of marketing agencies out there, but if you are in the startup phase of growth I’d recommend going with a startup growth agency that has experience in the earlier stages.

I have done some of the research for you by putting together a list of the top 9 startup agencies I know deliver great results. So, at least...