Bimodalism

About a couple weeks ago I caught up with a friend from college who is, "self-described", probably the most successful person out of his year at his top school. He spent a couple years post college becoming the superconnector in databricks alumni investors, and now is a common 1st or 2nd call for a number of reputable VCs for diligencing AI infrastructure deliverables

He works at one of those startups now on those lists of low headcount, high ARR velocity startups that have become so common in the last few years (Cursor, Lovable, etc.) He described to me what he called "bimodalism" emerging in the sense of AI founders. One could honestly chalk this up to a new iteration of the way to emphasize a new group of founders above the rest but there is a strong argument to be made that this is a consequence of AI 10xing the velocity of product development. Founders that were essentially AI native were on a second bimodal distribution of founders who just did a lot more with less.

There was a bit of tradeoff between domain expertise (with older founders) who knew how to do some things better and to avoid certain shortcuts and super perky younger founders who knew the exact AI tool for every task (but would make pitfalls). But I think also, that the tradeoff between failing fast and learning and doing a lot more with better domain expertise has finally been flipped in favor of the younger founders. Or maybe that was always evident in some form. If anything, I think its incredibly obvious now with all the charts floating around boasting strong employee/ARR ratios (shoutout to Lovable, Mercor, Cursor, etc.).

The effects of not being on that second distribution aren't only for founders. They're kind of being amplified everywhere else. You just see it more evidently in founders because this is a force multiplier, and founders are already 10x normal people.