We're witnessing the rise of a new kind of founder: the content creator.
Founders have always been storytellers, but now the "story" is directly tied to brand & distribution.
This shift comes from:
- falling inference costs
- AI that can build software
- a fast-moving devtools market that now faces consumers
- an increasing velocity of information
As AI and devtools get better, software becomes a commodity.
As software costs deflate, the value of brand & distribution increases. If software is no longer a moat, brand is.
If everyone is shipping software, choice is paradoxical. You'll buy from the people you know and trust to avoid the noise.
You already subscribe to your favorite YouTubers. You will "subscribe" to your favorite founders.
Investors know this and they're worried.
They're worried because they've been betting on stable (or rising) engineering costs for decades. Now, they're hedging their bets.
That's why they backed Cluely and Arcarae. It's why a16z is ramping up their media division. It's how TBPN became a household name in just a few months.
Elon bought the distribution when he acquired Twitter. At Replit, many of our biggest sales days are "Amjad led growth.""
If zero to $100M is the new normal, story and speed win.
Beyond adoption, companies endure when customers trust the founder and believe in the narrative.
Today, a compelling narrative has become reason enough to raise. Hell, a meme is now reason enough to raise.
In five years, you'll buy from voices you trust, hire people you know, and invest in what matters to you. We default to the familiar in a noisy world: it's already difficult to tell what's real and what's not.
This is already true in the labor market. There's so much AI noise that the best roles are being hired offline, based on reputation. This will be true in other markets as well.
People don't care about companies, they care about stories. These stories are often tied to a person or a movement (brand).
It turns out there's no replacement for being human, even as we push toward the artificial. The best thing we can do is be ourselves and tell our stories in a genuine, authentic way.