AI

also referred to as: artificial intelligence

51 statements across 42 episodes · 23 bullish · 13 bearish · 39 people on the record · first statement Jan 25, 2016 by Nathan Latka · across every show →

Everything said about AI, oldest first

Jan 25, 2016 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Latka: Artists and creatives will rule the world as AI advances
“And I think as AI artificial intelligence and machine learning continues to advance, The artists and the creatives are going to eventually rule the world because you can't automate to empathy, which is what architecture majors and artists and people like you h…”
Nathan Latka Jan 25, 2016 ▶ 11:04 How Students Can Sell First $6k with Elijah Montecelli of Montecelli Band & Satchel
Apr 18, 2016 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spartz in 2016: AI Will Write Headlines Before Other Content
“So I would say the headlines themselves are all still written by humans, but I think when it comes to algorithmically created content, the headlines are gonna be the first thing that are actually completely written by AI.”
Emerson Spartz Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 13:18 Turning Humans Into Robots For 50 Million Monthly Unique Wesbite Views with Emerson Spartz of Dose.com Ep 240
Jun 2, 2016 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spivack: AI job displacement will target manual and factory labor
“In fact, I think, basically where AI is going to Replace jobs is, is lower level manual labor, like factory labor.”
Nova Spivack Jun 2, 2016 ▶ 12:38 The Inside Scoop On Building $1b+ Unicorn Data Company with Nova at Bottlenose.com, EP 248: Nova Spivack
Jun 2, 2016 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spivack: Machine-generated news will fail outside narrow domains
“I don't believe that machine generated news outside of maybe very narrow domains, like financial news is, is really going to Cut it. I think that, you know, the human brain is so far beyond what AI can do today.”
Nova Spivack Jun 2, 2016 ▶ 11:48 The Inside Scoop On Building $1b+ Unicorn Data Company with Nova at Bottlenose.com, EP 248: Nova Spivack
Jun 2, 2016 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spivack: AI is nowhere near replacing programmers, editors, or writers
“I do not think that AI is anywhere near replacing programmers, which I think are creative people, or editors, or writers.”
Nova Spivack Jun 2, 2016 ▶ 12:28 The Inside Scoop On Building $1b+ Unicorn Data Company with Nova at Bottlenose.com, EP 248: Nova Spivack
Nov 18, 2016 bullish
Disclosure
Snip.ly is building an AI tool to turn blogs into videos
“Now we're investing very heavily in a new platform. That's going to automatically convert blog posts into videos using natural language processing and a bunch of artificial intelligence.”
Michael Cheng Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 16:34 EP 482: Snip.ly $50k MRR, 1000 Customers For Lead Gen on Social Media Sharing with CEO Michael Cheng
Jan 6, 2017 bullish
Opinion
ZeroApp claims to be the only email client running AI on-device
“In our case, we're probably the only company that develops an artificial intelligence on device. It's a device centric. So it runs on the device itself, not in the cloud.”
Alex Babin Jan 6, 2017 ▶ 6:45 EP 531: $5m Note Cap Pre-Revenue? How? With ZeroApp CEO Alex Babin
Jan 24, 2017 neutral
Insight
Bouck: AI in CRM is merely 'sprinkles' rather than the core differentiator
“At the end of the day, I think a lot of this is really still a productivity product, and I think the AI ends up being the sprinkles that make it great, as opposed to the core differentiator.”
Eric Bouck Jan 24, 2017 ▶ 9:36 EP 549: Propeller CEO on Why He'll Win CRM Space After Exit to Samsung with Eric Bouck
May 21, 2017 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Epstein: AI will make the world unrecognizable within 5 to 10 years
“The world will not be recognizable from a technology standpoint 10 years from now, and some would even say five.”
John Epstein May 21, 2017 ▶ 19:05 666: Sentient $100M+ Raised, A/B Testing With Artificial Intelligence with Exited Founder and SVP Jon Epstein
Jun 28, 2017
Disclosure
Newton uses AI and user prompts on wearable data to detect seizures
“By applying not only our own algorithm, filtering algorithms, artificial intelligence, we can actually filter down and say, Hey, we, with this degree of certainty, believe that this is a seizure. And from there, we, you know, we allow the, we notify the indivi…”
Eric Dolan Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 11:52 704: A Son Saving His Mom With Health Tech Product That Recognizes Seizures
Jul 5, 2017 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Faggella predicts AI will yield post-human intelligence within our lifetime
“Neuroscience and artificial intelligence and the stuff that I think within our lifetime, Nathan, will kind of tinker us beyond sentience and intelligence as we know it today into something kind of post-human and I don't think that's going to be in the next two…”
Dan Faggella Jul 5, 2017 ▶ 17:27 711: Bootrapping into Silicon Valley
Jul 23, 2017 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nathan Latka: AI data commoditization means creatives will soon rule business
“This comes back down to why I believe creatives are actually going to rule the world very soon because it's going to be people that do creative things with The perfect data that everybody else has. It's going to ultimately determine who wins, and you can't aut…”
Nathan Latka Jul 23, 2017 ▶ 22:06 729: Will Edelman Digital Creator Lead New AI Marketing World?
Nov 11, 2017
Disclosure
Flashtalking is not using AI, releasing first ML tools in 2017
“We are not really using AI today. So we're going to have our first generation of machine learning coming out at the end of this year. But to this point, flash talking has been very focused on heuristic based targeting.”
John Nardone Nov 11, 2017 ▶ 13:02 840: Ad Tech: $400m from Apple? Deal! FlashTalking Doing 15-40b Impressions/month
Jan 22, 2018 negative
Opinion
Rawson: Screenshot monitoring is not the future of remote productivity
“We do have a screenshot feature similar to Upwork and the, that's great. And but I don't actually feel like that's the future. Like I say, I think the artificial intelligence part is the future because you can more accurately determine what What's actually goi…”
Rob Rawson Jan 22, 2018 ▶ 5:06 912 SaaS: Internet Hacker Builds Bootstrapped Productivity Tool, Passes $2.4m in ARR
Jun 30, 2018 positive
Disclosure
Treiser: Arjuna improves AI models without commingling customer data
“Every group we work with, our algorithms get better, they get smarter, but none of the actual data for any group gets ever basically commingled, aggregated, so effectively the model may itself may get smarter. The AI learns, and it's acquiring more knowledge, …”
Adam Treiser Jun 30, 2018 ▶ 12:06 1071 His AI Tool Tells You How To Price Realtime
Jun 30, 2018 positive
Opinion
Treiser: Arjuna is first company to productize artificial intelligence
“What we've done here at our soon is we're really the first company to have productized artificial intelligence.”
Adam Treiser Jun 30, 2018 ▶ 4:21 1071 His AI Tool Tells You How To Price Realtime
Jun 30, 2018
Insight
Treiser: AI value is domain expertise rather than infrastructure
“When you think of AI, that's where we really see the opportunity going forward, which is, it's not so much about infrastructure, but, and about the ability for machine to learn, but what machine, what do you want your machine to actually learn? Because you wan…”
Adam Treiser Jun 30, 2018 ▶ 13:31 1071 His AI Tool Tells You How To Price Realtime
Jul 5, 2018 negative
Insight
Enterprise purchase decisions will always require human interpretation over AI
“No matter how much AI you apply, somebody at the end of the day has to understand what the data is showing you and what kind of an impact that's going to make on your business how to translate that to somebody in terms of the meaning for a purchase decision.”
Chris Kenton Jul 5, 2018 ▶ 13:54 1076 We pivoted to pure play SaaS, now $1m in ARR growing 100% yoy
Nov 30, 2018
Disclosure
Hildreth: Crisp's AI processes 99% of content with human verification
“AI does all the heavy lifting for 99% of the content, and sometimes we just verify it with a human to make sure that AI isn't making those mistakes.”
Adam Hildreth Nov 30, 2018 ▶ 2:43 1224 CrispThinking passes $10m in ARR helping Enterprise Manage Social Media
Apr 12, 2019 bullish
Opinion
Bates: The Biggest Opportunity in AI Is Going Deep into Vertical Domains
“There's mostly vertical plays, and that's where we see the biggest opportunity is going deep into a domain right now, be it biotech or music or other domains like that”
Alex Bates Apr 12, 2019 ▶ 5:23 1357 How He's Betting on the Future of AI
Aug 5, 2019 bearish
Opinion
Lu Zhang: AI advantages are in industry and healthcare, not consumer apps
“It's hard to name one killer app for AI application for consumer facing, like, companies or product. But when we see like AI in industry or AI in healthcare, you could see the full capacity and also advantages to use this technology.”
Lu Zhang Aug 5, 2019 ▶ 13:47 1472 How She Raised Her Own $90m Fund at 29 Years Old
Feb 16, 2020 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Malone: AI already writes a large portion of daily newspaper stories
“A lot of those newspaper stories you read every day are being done by AI, not by human beings.”
Mike Malone Feb 16, 2020 ▶ 6:50 1667 Top Tech Journalist Predicts We'll All Be Unemployed, Blockchain Takeover, Less Taxes!
Apr 13, 2020 neutral
Opinion
Pompliano: US Is Not the Global Leader in AI, Ed/Health, or Crypto
“Like average to above average in all three of those buckets today. But there's a lot of room for improvement. And I don't think that we're the best at any of those.”
Anthony Pompliano Apr 13, 2020 ▶ 46:55 New podcast: Anthony Pompliano on Price of Bitcoin, Gold, Chinese Power, Corporate Bailouts and 3 Places He's Investing
Apr 30, 2020 bearish
Insight
Booth: Tech Monopolies Inevitably Reconsolidate Because Humans Cannot Handle Infinite Choice
“So even if you now break it back apart, somebody's going to sit on top and consolidate it back.”
Jeff Booth Apr 30, 2020 ▶ 49:48 When Will Poor Revolt Against Rich? Is Unemployment Good? Currency Pegged To Bitcoin with Jeff Booth
Apr 30, 2020 neutral
Assertion Supported
Booth: Over 60% of AI Investment Comes from Tech Monopolies
“I think it's over 60% of the dollars invested in AI are coming from the monopoly companies.”
Jeff Booth Apr 30, 2020 ▶ 45:28 When Will Poor Revolt Against Rich? Is Unemployment Good? Currency Pegged To Bitcoin with Jeff Booth
Jun 25, 2020 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Alves: Recent AI Exits Reached $300M-$400M on Just $3M-$5M ARR
“In the space that we're in, like if you look at AI, there's the last two exits that I saw were in the range of the companies had between three and five ARR and sold for between three and four hundred million dollars.”
Pedro Alves Jun 25, 2020 ▶ 19:56 AI Company Ople $15m Raised, Just $500k Revenue, Overvalued?
May 28, 2022 negative
Insight
Hyman: Companies without data scientists on LinkedIn are not doing real AI
“And one quick check that I suggest to businesses is go out on LinkedIn and see whether there are any data scientists. If they're not, then there's not really AI going on.”
Barb Hyman May 28, 2022 ▶ 1:27 She Hit $6m Bootstrapped for HR Tool, Will Place 200,000 Candidates This Year
Aug 14, 2022 negative
Opinion
Bergen: Most companies claiming to use AI actually use human labor
“Well, that's the funny thing about AI. Everyone says they're doing AI and typically there's just a bunch of people behind the scenes.”
Taylor Bergen Aug 14, 2022 ▶ 10:46 Bootstrapped to $1m in Under 18 Months, How he's growing his ATS SaaS
Dec 10, 2022 negative
Assertion Contradicted
Dubin: AI cannot generate layered visuals or multi-layer banners
“To be honest, it's not applied to generating layered visuals. As for now, just either, like, plain images or very good quality texts, but not actually, like, banners”
Victoria Dubin Dec 10, 2022 ▶ 2:20 She has guts! Turned down $20m offer with $15k in MRR for her Ad Management SaaS
Jan 30, 2023
Assertion Supported
Ruggiero: Massive's Technical Team Has Published Over 100 AI Papers
“Our team is, is in Italy, and we have more than 100 papers published on AI.”
Gianluca Ruggiero Jan 30, 2023 ▶ 7:45 How he doubled from $500k to $1m Last 12 months selling Data as a Service
Aug 1, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Coro's AI removes over 95% of human security stack management
“We've removed more than 95% of the human element through AI, through automation”
Dror Liwer Aug 1, 2023 ▶ 9:57 Coro Breaks $25m ARR, Hits $600m Valuation Growing 300% YoY in CyberSecurity for Mid Market Space
Aug 23, 2023 bullish
Opinion
Nellemans: AI can reduce outreach needed per reply to 10–100 emails
“AI can actually improve the quality so much that you do not have to send a thousand emails to get a reply, but in the end, maybe a hundred, or maybe even 10 to get a reply.”
Steven Nellemans Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 2:22 Proof you don't need a new idea, just better execution. Firm hits 160 customers, $25k MRR
Aug 25, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Bhattacharya: 70% of Involve.ai's coding is generated by AI
“70% of our coding is now done with AI.”
Gaurav "G" Bhattacharya Aug 25, 2023 ▶ 16:03 Team of 12 Hits $2.5m in ARR, $64m Valuation for Customer Success Tool. Can they beat Gainsight?
Apr 23, 2024 bearish
Insight
Cohen: AI Summaries Discard Crucial Context From Leadership Feedback
“I think what's good about AI and those things is it does summarize okay, but it leaves out detail that might be the whole story. Like the details where you really understand. If you just say stuff like, you need to listen more, you're like, okay, I get it. But…”
Jason Cohen Apr 23, 2024 ▶ 21:31 We just hit $400m in revenues. Here are 9 org chart, people moves I had to make to scale
May 30, 2024 neutral
Insight
Moore: Founders Underappreciate How Fast Markets Drift Away From Products
“Particularly in the markets that many of us operate in, and AI is a great paradigm to look at around this, the speed with which markets actually are moving as well is really, really underappreciated. So while you are pivoting your way to product market fit, do…”
Bob Moore May 30, 2024 ▶ 8:48 How to Sell your Company for $60m (from a Founder who did it)
Oct 15, 2024 positive
Insight
Omnisend CEO: AI models will not recommend brands lacking general awareness
“But, you know, now I believe that in the world of AI, general brand awareness will become more important. It's the same as, like, human brain, yeah? If artificial brain will not see you as a market player, they will never recommend you.”
Rytis Lauris Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 20:21 Genius SEO Hacks This 34 Year Old Used to Bootstrap to $55m Revenue with Omnisend CEO Rytis Lauris
Oct 24, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Hyrkin: Non-AI SaaS companies cannot get revenue multiples above 5x
“Not six. I mean unless you're AI right now, you're not getting north of five.”
Joe Hyrkin Oct 24, 2024 ▶ 3:52 Bending Spoons just bought his company for $100,000,000+ with Issuu CEO Joe Hyrkin
Nov 19, 2024 bullish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Ninety will auto-generate org charts and seat-level KPIs within a year
“Well, within Plus or minus a year from now, you can give us that information, and we will immediately give you what a likely organizational chart will look like for you. Not only that, we'll give you the KPIs, not just for your company, but for every single se…”
Mark Abbott Nov 19, 2024 ▶ 10:54 They make $30m per year selling software to the EOS community, Ninety CEO
Jun 10, 2025 positive
What-if
Zitoun: Submagic would need 40 to 50 employees without AI tools
“Like without AI, we should have been maybe 40 in the company or 50 people to do what we do.”
David Zitoun Jun 10, 2025 ▶ 37:25 How I Built my AI Tool SubMagic to $667k/Month With a Tiny Team and No Funding
Jul 8, 2025
Insight
Torres: AI excels at duplicating high-performing content, not creating
“AI, what you have to understand is AI is very good at duplicating stuff. It's I think it's gonna be good at creating very soon, but right now, like, it's, like, really world class at taking something that is good and doing something similar.”
Romain Torres Jul 8, 2025 ▶ 17:50 My Agent Army Brings Me $500,000 Per Month (Exploding SaaS)
Jul 29, 2025 negative
Opinion
Hamdi: Y Combinator AI startups are often 'fugazi' ChatGPT wrappers
“I think AI right now has a lot of like Y Combinator kind of fugazi with a couple of people and, you know, a chat GPT wrapper.”
Bassem Hamdi Jul 29, 2025 ▶ 13:24 He Makes $20m/Yr Selling Digital Robots to Companies
Dec 10, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Romain Torres: AI will completely replace human ad copywriting and optimization
“One skill that until now was very important, but that is gonna be completely replaced by AI over time. Basically what will happen, I think, is You'll describe your product. AI will come up with a script for you that will use a platform like Arcades automatical…”
Romain Torres Dec 10, 2025 ▶ 24:01 From $5K to $10M ARR: The ArcAds Founder's Playbook
Jan 14, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Siordas: Flipsnack relies on human designers for templates rather than AI
“It's humans creating it, but so what we do two things with AI for now the number one is accessibility.”
Gabriel Siordas Jan 14, 2026 ▶ 14:45 Bootstrapped to $15M ARR: How Flipsnack Scaled Digital Publishing with SEO & $200K ACVs
Feb 4, 2026 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Pure SaaS companies will see revenue drop to zero within years
“So, I mean, look, my general thought on this is SAS is dead. So if you're just SAS, your revenue is going to go to zero in the next couple of years.”
Matt Spiegel Feb 4, 2026 ▶ 23:43 How to Scale to $12M ARR: The Serial Founder Playbook for Vertical SaaS and Agentic AI
Feb 4, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Lawmatics can reach a 12x-13x valuation multiple with AI
“Given where we are in the market now, and especially with some of the stuff with AI, I think we actually will get back to, or we have the opportunity to get back to a 12 or 13 X multiple on business if we look to do something.”
Matt Spiegel Feb 4, 2026 ▶ 19:50 How to Scale to $12M ARR: The Serial Founder Playbook for Vertical SaaS and Agentic AI
May 6, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kaufman: SafeBooks AI Can Fully Automate Cross-System Financial Data Validation
“And we now using the benefits and power of AI, we can fully automate that work.”
Ahikam Kaufman May 6, 2026 ▶ 1:40 Selling Check for $400M, Now Building a $1.5M ARR AI Startup
May 6, 2026 neutral
Insight
Kaufman: Financial AI requires end-to-end data context across all systems
“You can't just One AI on each and every system in the office of the CFO. You have to give it the context of the end-to-end data from all the systems that participate in the business process.”
Ahikam Kaufman May 6, 2026 ▶ 20:14 Selling Check for $400M, Now Building a $1.5M ARR AI Startup
Jun 11, 2026 bullish
Insight
Latka: Combining IoT and SaaS creates highly defensible AI data moats
“You're seeing the world of AI. Anyone that has a data moat really wins. And one way to build an impressive data moat is to have a SAS plus business model. We have IOT plus SAS.”
Nathan Latka Jun 11, 2026 ▶ 1:37 Tive Hit $100M Revenue After a Down Round and $10K in the Bank
Sep 1, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Turner: Swipeby Operates as an Autopilot Marketing Agency With Zero Human Staff
“Which is really the AI economy that it is on fully autopilot. But you can think about us as a super boring marketing agency, just that there is no one actually in the agency and it's AI.”
Carl Turner Sep 1, 2026 ▶ 1:49 He Sells AI Door-to-Door. $3.5M ARR, 400% Growth, $0 Ads
Sep 1, 2026 neutral
Insight
Turner: Many Software Workflows Should Remain Deterministic Rather Than AI-Powered
“And I think the one thing which in this world of AI is the reality is also not everything needs to be AI. A lot of the thing is deterministic, right? Like it's, we're now trying to AI-fy everything when there's a lot of workflows that can be actually just dete…”
Carl Turner Sep 1, 2026 ▶ 4:22 He Sells AI Door-to-Door. $3.5M ARR, 400% Growth, $0 Ads
Sep 1, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Latka: Rolling Up Physical Businesses Using Software Data Is AI's Future
“We are looking for what we call ABC, and that's atoms plus bits plus capital. Bits is Carl. He has data that sits on top of the atoms. He knows what restaurants are performing, what hair salons are performing, and then you have the capital to then go fund the …”
Nathan Latka Sep 1, 2026 ▶ 18:44 He Sells AI Door-to-Door. $3.5M ARR, 400% Growth, $0 Ads
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