Building From Zero: Founders, Investors & What AI Changes
Hot Nerd Summer #9 The ninth session of Hot Nerd Summer put founders and investors in the same room to ask what building from nothing looks like now. The conversation ran from starting alone at a desk to six and a half billion in revenue, to why the durable AI businesses will be the ones that become the reference operating system for an entire industry; from a candid read on which parts of the current market are a bubble, to a middle of the labour market that is hollowing out, to hiring for who someone is rather than what they know, and a health system that pays to treat disease and nothing to prevent it. Held under the Chatham House Rule, with voices from venture capital, consumer retail, machine learning, public finance, and enterprise AI. Selected, unattributed quotes below.
Main Guests
Sehr Thadhani
Chief Growth Officer, Nasdaq · Guest moderator
Brad Keywell
Co-founder, Groupon, Echo Global Logistics, Uptake & Mediaocean · Founder, Gigawatt AI
Rick Heitzmann
Co-founder & Partner, FirstMark Capital · Early backer of Pinterest, Airbnb, DraftKings & Riot Games
Maxine Clark
Founder, Build-A-Bear Workshop · Former President, Payless ShoeSource
Esther Dyson
Investor & author
David Walker
Former U.S. Comptroller General
Phil Chow
Machine learning entrepreneur · Formerly with Mark Cuban's portfolio
Lin Wells
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
Jesus Mantas
Former IBM AI & consulting leader · Biogen board member
and more...
From the discussion
Almost every one of our companies now worth over a billion dollars was, at some point, weeks away from being worth zero.
“That company is now six and a half billion dollars in revenue. It started with just me at a desk.
“The most durable businesses are going to be the reference operating systems for their industries — legal, accounting, manufacturing — the companies that find a way in early.
“An entrepreneur is rowing a boat. Every day the waves come over the side and fill it with water — and the waves are bureaucracy and operational challenges. Thinking there won't be waves is silly. That's the ocean. The question is whether you keep bailing.
“My first board of directors was children.
“When I told adults about the idea, they said, why would anybody want to make their own stuffed animal? But every child could name fourteen animals they wanted to make. They didn't see the no. They saw the possibility.
“Parts of it are a complete bubble. There are companies with an idea and three résumés raising at a billion-dollar valuation. I've lived through enough cycles to know that generally ends in tears.
“The middle is getting hollowed out. Large corporations become franchisers of AI at one end, and small practitioners sit at the other.
“They used to have fifty people doing this for the CFO. Now they have two. And the CFO says, I need zero — I just feel bad for those two people.
“We made the transition from hiring people who have all the right answers to people who can think about all the right questions.
“There is no doctor who will prevent dementia. But there are plenty who will treat epilepsy — because it's a disease, it has a code, and they get paid for it.
“If you're levered four-to-one on assets that have already run up, a thirty percent drawdown doesn't dent you — it ends you.
“Change is the surest way to be fully alive.
Digital Battlefield Group convenes senior leaders from government, industry, and academia to discuss intelligence and national security in the age of AI. All events operate under Chatham House Rule.
Learn more about DBG →