Interesting Triangle founder-friendly reads from week 25/52

A collection of content I saw this week that was interesting.

The amount of quality (e.g. not genai ) content coming out right now is amazing. I’ve filtered out some things here that I think you’ll enjoy - with a focus on all things startups: foundation, speed, trends, fundraising and GTM.

Before we get into it, a thanks to our sponsors→

• Robinson Bradshaw - A full-service business law firm with a passion for supporting the Triangle entrepreneurial ecosystem. Learn more about Robinson Bradshaw’s startups and venture capital practice here.EisnerAmper (formerly HPG) - One of the world’s largest business consulting firms, with a dedicated technology practice offering outsourcing, accounting, tax, and advisory services. Our experienced professionals serve more than 2,000 technology companies, from early-stage startups to public enterprises. Discover how EisnerAmper’s stage-specific solutions and industry expertise can help you achieve your milestones whether startup, international expansion, M&A, or IPO: eisneramper.com/tech.

• Lithios Apps - Lithios Apps is a Triangle-based software design and development studio that builds custom mobile and web applications focused on quality and user experience. We help founders and teams bring products to life that drive growth, engage customers, and stand out in competitive markets. We've worked side by side with clients whose products have gone on to earn millions in follow-on funding.

• Whitley Recruiting Partners - Whitley Recruiting Partners specializes in recruiting top tech talent for growth-stage startups in the Triangle. We target industry-specific, entrepreneurial employees who drive immediate results through a fast, accurate, and scalable recruiting process. Special offer for Tweener Times subscribers: Free survey of available local talent for one of your openings.

• Bank of America – BofA’s Transformative Technology Group helps game-changing tech businesses and founders realize their boldest ambitions across a wide range of technology sectors. With hands-on support, world-class resources, and an extensive network – BofA provides the stability and scalability that tech companies need to rapidly grow today and into the future.Aligned Technology Group - Navigating cloud costs as a startup? ATG helps you maximize AWS Activate credits—up to $100K for startups and $300K for AI-driven startup businesses. As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, we streamline your cloud journey, optimizing security, scalability, and cost efficiency. Startups move fast. We help you build smarter. Let’s unlock your AWS credits today.

• ExtensisHR - As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), ExtensisHR empowers tech founders and growing businesses to scale smarter. We take HR administration off your plate—managing payroll, recruiting, employee benefits and retirement plans, compliance, risk, and more—so you can focus on innovation. For over 25 years we’ve leveraged a people-first approach, customer-centric mindset, and deep industry expertise to ensure employers have the tools needed to stay competitive in today’s market.

Coutue’s East/West Conference drops a bunch of truth bombs.

Coutue Ventures ($30b+ AUM - private side only) for 10 years has done a show and in their keynote (full deck here) they talk about their view of public and private markets. The three slides that are generating a lot of buzz:

First, they call for an AI supercycle:

Then they have this chart that plots ChatGPT’s MAUs indexed from zero against

Now you can see why mark Zuckerberg at META is hiring OpenAI folks for a $100m signing bonus!

THIS I’ve never seen before - by Coutue’s calcs, ChatGPT is chewing up ~30m/day from their users (I think I’m at 180m, so I’m skewing it higher). Look what it’s closing in at on this chart hanging out at about 50mins? There’s only so many minutes in the day, at some point doom scrolling (Sam talks about why Meta fears chatgpt and why chatgpt makes you feel better) will fall to our GenAI friends.