[Music] At YC, we work with a ton of founders who are navigating the B2B sales process for the very first time. And I often notice some very common and easily avoidable mistakes that I want to talk about today. So, I'm going to describe the typical progression that a B2B founder goes through.normally starting with something like a a really poorly defined and overly long unpaid design partnership uh all the way through to the like the pro move which is a rapid well-defined tightlyun sales process that result ...

What do people do who are successful. They take an over constrained problem and figure out how to unconstrain it. And that magical sort of three things right which is bringing clarity, creating energy and driving success by solving over constrained problems is what I think leadership is about.But leadership is not about something that you do later in life. If you do it every step of the way,. ...

Figma's Evolution and Strategy - Figma has grown to 1,700 people and eight products, doubling its product lineup recently [3] - Figma emphasizes launching products quickly to gather user feedback, advocating for a one to three-month cadence for product releases [23][26] - Figma identifies user behaviors within Figma Design and then creates separate products to address those needs, such as FigJam, Slides, Draw, Buzz, Sites and Make [46][47][48][51] Design and AI - The design industry is experiencing exponential growth, driven by the increasing importance of design as a differentiator in software development [40][41] - Figma views AI as blurring the lines between design and development, empowering generalist behavior and accelerating prototyping [52][55] - Figma believes the current AI user interface, often based on chat boxes, is similar to the MS DOS era, suggesting significant evolution is expected in the next decade [57] Founder Insights and Advice - Designers are encouraged to step into founder roles, as design becomes a key differentiator [68][69] - Founders should give themselves time to explore and iterate, as early pivots can be crucial for success [13] - Seeking feedback and even rejection is valuable for product development, providing essential data for improvement [36][38]

Business Strategy & Innovation - The genesis of successful ventures like Open AAI and SpaceX often stems from initial interest and a hunch, rather than immediate commercial intent [1] - This approach can attract top talent and capital, leading to the creation of enduring businesses [1] Key Success Factors - Inherent ability combined with genuine interest are crucial components for success [1] - Attracting the smartest people in the world is a key factor in building successful businesses [1]

Government Consulting Market & Trends - US government spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually on consulting [1] - Political pressure exists to cut wasteful consulting and spending [1] - Government increasingly relies on software, often custom-built [1] LLM Impact & Opportunities - LLMs are capable of performing tasks currently done by consulting firms [2] - Funding is being directed towards startups assisting with government sales approvals (Fed Ramp) [2][3] - Funding is also supporting companies using LLMs to improve government regulation and policy legality [3] Investment Focus - The company aims to fund startups developing LLM software for government consulting tasks [3]

Market Overview - Salesforce and ServiceNow are major enterprise software vendors, each generating over $10 billion in annual revenue and possessing a market capitalization exceeding $200 billion [1] - Both companies were founded approximately 25 years ago, pioneering cloud-native CRM and ITSM systems respectively [1] Strategic Opportunity - The rise of SaaS provided an opportunity to create products that were 10 times better than existing solutions [2] - Incumbents struggled to adapt to cloud computing, giving startups a competitive advantage [2][3] - AI presents a similar opportunity for new companies to develop AI-native enterprise software [3] Technological Shift - Future enterprise software systems will integrate AI to enhance employee productivity and accuracy [4] - Incumbents may face challenges in rebuilding their products around AI, creating opportunities for startups [4]

AI Agent Evolution - AI agents are evolving into distributed workflows with many sub-agent calls in a single run [1] - These multi-agent systems are useful for long-running workflows and agentic map reduce jobs [1] - These systems apply human-level judgment to filter and search through large amounts of data in parallel [1] Challenges in Building Multi-Agent Systems - Building these systems requires solving traditional distributed systems problems to ensure high throughput and reliability while controlling costs [2] - New problems include writing effective agent and sub-agent prompts, handling untrusted context, and monitoring and debugging agents [2] Call to Action - The industry is looking for builders who have felt this pain in production and want to create tools to make these systems easier to build and maintain [2] - The industry aims to make operating fleets of agents as routine and reliable as deploying a web service or running a Spark job [3]

Thanks to new AI tools, we believe it's now possible for small high agency teams, even solo founders, to build multi-billion dollar companies with as little as just $500,000 in funding from YC. 15 years ago, cloud computing came along and eliminated the need for spending tons of money on physical server infrastructure, making it easier to build a big company with way less capital. This is happening again right now with new AI tools that make it easier for ambitious founders to scale with far fewer people.Th ...

Technological Advancements - Video generation models are rapidly improving, with Google's V3 producing 8-second photorealistic clips for a few dollars per video [1] - The cost of generating near-perfect video is approaching zero, positioning video as a new basic building block for software [1] Potential Applications & Market Opportunities - Generative video will transform media and entertainment, enabling personalized content creation like custom TV seasons and AI-native successors to TikTok [2] - Online shopping experiences will be enhanced, allowing consumers to visualize themselves using products or wearing clothes [3] - Gaming and simulation will undergo major changes, including video games built without game engines and infinite robotic training data [3] - Video calls with loved ones long after they're gone may become possible [3] Investment & Innovation Focus - The industry is interested in founders who view generative video as a new computing primitive, not just an output [4] - The industry seeks founders building new apps, tooling, and infrastructure for a world with limitless, low latency video [4]

Industry Trend - AI revolution requires significant physical infrastructure buildout, including data centers and semiconductor fabs [1] - Shortage of skilled tradespeople, such as electricians, HVAC technicians, and welders, poses a challenge to infrastructure development [2] - Government's AI action plan emphasizes worker-first agenda and rapid retraining programs for physical labor jobs [2][3] Investment Opportunity - Opportunities exist for startups to build new vocational schools for the AI economy, training people for physical labor jobs [3] - AI can personalize training programs to prepare individuals for jobs in months instead of years [4] - Multimodal AI, including voice AI, AR, and VR, can be used to coach and provide feedback in real-world simulations [4][5] - Employers are willing to pay for well-trained workers in these fields [5] - AI can potentially solve the scalability issues of traditional training businesses by creating effective AI teachers that can scale infinitely [6] Potential Risk - Challenge lies in teaching hands-on skills like welding or pipe fixing via AI, as these skills require real-world practice [4] - Traditional training businesses have struggled to scale due to the difficulty in maintaining the quality of human tutors [6]