Weekly digest #85
2026: This is AGI, The intelligent investor’s bookshelf, Standing out
We (Matt and Shray) read hundreds of articles on company building, venture investing, and self-management and curate the best ones into a weekly digest to help founders and operators stay on the top of their game.
Better thinking
2026: This is AGI (7 minute read)
A very worthwhile read. How do we define AGI? Up for debate, but a simple version could be: “AGI is the ability to figure things out.” And we’re experiencing that reality now with some agent workflows. You can set them a task and they’ll work their way through several layers of reasoning. Today they can do tasks that might take perhaps an hour or at most a day for a well-trained human to do (finding a good candidate to hire, writing code). Tomorrow (or by 2030 as the article suggests), perhaps they could “figure out” a task that would take humans a century. 2026 is most certainly the year we’ll see AI turn from talkers (LLMs) to doers (autonomous agents).
Two modes of storytelling (4 minute read)
“Storytelling” is a term being used more across tech. I’m being reductive, but to me it’s simply a new take on using building in public as a GTM strategy. Akshay (Notion’s co-founder) suggests that the best storytellers operate in two modes. “Studio” (slow, deliberate, crafted over months) or “Newsroom” (fast, reactive, riding a moment). Each has a failure case. The former being too inward or taking too long. The latter being void of an identity. The best storytellers move between both modes. Catching the moment (newsroom), and defining new ones (studio).
How to fix your entire life in one day (19 minute read)
I mostly shy away from anything that looks “self-help”. This is good though. It argues that most people think they lack discipline, but really, they’re just protecting an old identity. This breaks down why the bodybuilder doesn’t grind to eat healthy (eating unhealthy would be the grind), because it’s just who they are. Why your goals are probably someone else’s conditioning, and how to actually reset. Includes a full-day protocol with morning journaling, timed interrupts throughout the day, and evening synthesis to figure out what life you’re building toward.
Operational tactics
The year of invisible AI (7 minute read)
The best AI products (B2B, not consumer) plug into tools people already use (Slack, Gmail, Salesforce) rather than forcing new workflows. AI works best when it’s invisible. Your users don’t care what model powers things - they just want their work done faster. Think tagging an AI assistant in Slack that feels no different than tagging a colleague. There’s a few companies getting there. Thankfully Linear is one of them ;)
Growth is now a trust problem (4 minute read)
Word of mouth is always going to be your most enduring growth channel. You can try to engineer it with referral incentives, but I’m not a fan of doing that. It has to be genuine. The incentive is you’re helping a friend out by suggesting a product that solves a problem. Today, more than ever, you have to focus on the product experience (product is brand). And (to the link above) build in product. Not just the founders, but your entire team. Design should be sharing their iterations on X. Engineering stories about how they approach the customer problem. Etc.
How to sell your company (6 minute read)
Companies get bought, not sold. This thread walks through how to plant the idea early, find buyers who actually need what you’ve built, and avoid killing deals by pushing too hard. Spoiler (though you probably know it) - timing rarely lines up, most M&A fails, and relationships matter more than process.
Refer and we’ll send you our favorite books as a “thank you” for spreading the word.
Venture investing
Unpacking a “crisis moment” in seed (40 minute listen)
Rob Go (NextView Ventures) breaks down why traditional seed funds are struggling - squeezed by accelerators like YC from below and mega funds from above. They discuss what’s changed since 2011, how AI reshapes the landscape, and what seed managers need to do differently to survive. It’s a good listen.
Dear emerging manager (4 minute read)
Okay wow, a reality check for emerging GPs. A reminder - not everyone can be top quartile (math doesn’t work that way). Your SAFE/warrant rounds aren’t real markups. That multi-stage GP backing you has backed dozens of others. Founders you claim to know probably don’t remember you. Most LPs will go passive within months. And modeling 10%+ of your portfolio as outliers is very optimistic. Ouch, but the author wrote it to declare that truth beats romanticism. Keep working.
The intelligent investor’s bookshelf (3 minute read)
Most of us won’t have a legendary mentor sitting across the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re shut out from their insight. Books give us a form of proxy mentorship, a way to tap into the minds of people who’ve already done what we hope to achieve. Their ideas, their insights, their warnings, their triumphs. We may as well make use of this information; they certainly don’t need them anymore. If you’re looking to move forward this year, start by learning from the people who’ve already walked the path you plan to tread through these 90 titles.
Career management
Advice to new managers (2 minute read)
To put it simply - never joke about serious things. Even if you’re attempting to lift the tension in the air. Keep serious things serious (compensation, job security, company direction).
In a digital world filled with fake content by fake influencers with fake engagement from fake followers, launching fake products with fake testimonials, the real has never been more precious and special. Real people building real things that matter with real outcomes in the real world. As the definition between real and artificial continues to blur, standing out in a crowd will come from doing real things. In practice, this could mean designing real world events and artifacts, leaving people with memories that far outlast the cheap impressions generated by brain-rot content troughs. But be forewarned that constructing real narratives require sustained effort over 12 to 18 months. There are no shortcuts, but it’s well worth it for your career.
AI killed the individual contributor (5 minute read)
As AI gets increasingly capable, and its adoption becomes less a matter of debate and more a matter of pacing and strategy, the halcyon days of the IC are over. Not because AI codes better than you, but because maximizing your productivity necessitates focusing your time on all the things that are, at the end of the day, manager tasks. And sooner or later, your job will be managing a fleet of AIs. Although it might currently feel like managing a team of barely-competent interns, it’ll soon feel like managing a team of high performers. It’s important to recognize we’ve passed an event horizon where a choice between the two no longer exists because pandora’s box has been opened and the genie is out. There is clearly no going back. Welcome to management.