I had the idea, I had enough skills, and I had a version that was at least somewhat functional. But I couldn’t keep making headway by myself. Time is the eternal enemy of the mortal. It was time to bring in reinforcements.

The internet was built for humans, of humans, by humans. Websites segment traffic into audiences into revenue funnels into cash flow. Thanks for reading PaynPoint! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

AI companies live and die by their access to training data for their models. To get that content, they do what has been a common practice since the dawn of the internet - they crawl publicly available websites.

I had the idea, I had enough skills, and I had a version that was at least somewhat functional. But I couldn’t keep making headway by myself. Time is the eternal enemy of the mortal. It was time to bring in reinforcements.

In my last post, I talked about assembling a series of filters to use to view the startup landscape, which led me to a few conclusions about what opportunities I should pursue.

Years ago, while I was building Integrated Roadways, I was solicited by a recruiter to join a lauded and exclusive Executive MBA program. I demurred. The company was growing fast, I was busy with clients, I had employees to manage. “I have a lot to do, I can’t take on more,” I told them.

I ran the last one for a decade, that’s a whole story. A hell of a story. But a different story. I’ll tell it to you when I can, but not right now. The one before that was an e-commerce site that did pretty well but I didn’t love it. Before that were two service businesses. The first one I did for the love of the game, the second one was an attempt to make people stop asking me to fix their computer by charging them outrageous prices, which backfired horribly when they were eager to pay. None are relevant except to say I’ve been around the block and have the scars to prove it.