EPISODE 64

In this guest-free Founder Mode episode, Kevin and Jason run through five stories from the last thirty days to answer one question: is AI actually making your company better, or just busier? They open on Anthropic's short-lived "Fable 5" model — released, jailbroken, and switched off within days — and use it to riff on why staying at the AI frontier matters. From there they get practical: how to use AI to make yourself smarter rather than drowning your team in unread 30-page docs, why "show me where I'm wrong" beats getting glazed by a model that always agrees with you, and where things stand in the AI layoff cycle now that a $200-a-month subscription can act like an employee. Jason lays out his four levels of AI adoption — from treating it like Google up to a swarm of agents working while you sleep — and predicts level five will split companies into two classes. They close with Jason's confession (an AI outbound campaign that booked meetings, recorded podcasts, and made zero dollars, while a warm referral closed in eight days), the case for consulting-as-SaaS, and the founder's real job: firing yourself from every role and figuring out which one you should actually be playing this week. The throughline — the best model doesn't win, the best-organized company does.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Intro: Better or Just Busier?

00:43 – The AI Anthropic Gave, Then Switched Off

02:56 – Using AI to Get Smarter, Not Just Busier

07:41 – The $200 Employee and the AI Layoff Cycle

12:02 – The Four Levels of AI Adoption

14:44 – Consulting as SaaS: Context Is the Unlock

17:38 – The Confession: Zero Dollars vs. a Referral in 8 Days

19:56 – Firing Yourself From Every Job

22:47 – Recap and the Founder Mode Top Five

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EPISODE 63

Kevin and Jason go solo for a no-guest, no-filter breakdown of everything that happened to them in the past week. Kevin recaps the call center conference where one simple question, "What's your stack?", exposed an industry of companies bolting AI onto decades-old businesses, including one whose "AI" turned out to be an outsourced team manually shipping WAV files back and forth. From there they get to the real thesis: the money in AI isn't in building the brain (the foundation models) but in building the nervous system that wires that intelligence into unglamorous, real-world businesses. They dig into why taste and error correction are the durable moat, two practical on-ramps for any company trying to go AI-native, pointing agents directly at business KPIs, and Jason's full stack for turning client calls into interactive proposals. They close on the strange new category of "renting humans," why the marginal cost of everything is heading toward zero, and why the human premium, like live shows, real conversations, and white-glove service, only goes up from here.

CHAPTERS

00:54 – "What's your stack?" The conference that exposed fake AI

04:16 – Build the nervous system, not the brain

07:24 – Why taste and error correction are the real moat

10:08 – How to go AI-native (or credibly bolt it on)

15:38 – Pointing AI agents at your KPIs

17:03 – Jason's full AI proposal stack

21:43 – Renting humans and the new AI category

23:55 – Abundance, robots, and the rising human premium

28:39 – The Founder Mode Top Five

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EPISODE 62

Sahib has built from zero, survived chaos, and lived to tell the unvarnished version. In this episode he traces a path from hosting Airbnb guests at his family hotel to building a multi-million-dollar services marketplace in Thailand, then pivoting through Web3 and into AI. He explains the "cockroach mindset" — why chasing unicorn status is the biggest myth and mistake a founder can make, and why the ability to get beaten to the ground and wake up to fight another day matters more than any valuation. Along the way he shares how he landed his first customers with no product (a makeup artist sourced from his girlfriend's contacts, a housekeeper in a borrowed black t-shirt), why the supply side is the hard part of any marketplace, how the company survived COVID and reached an exit on roughly $400K raised while better-funded competitors raised millions and died, and why distribution, narrative, and radical honesty about your losses are the real moats today. It's a refreshingly direct take on resilience over hype.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – The unicorn myth vs. the cockroach mindset

06:12 – From hotel rooms to a services marketplace

09:04 – Landing your first ten customers with no product

12:39 – What the cockroach mindset means in practice

16:26 – Surviving COVID and reaching the exit

17:55 – The pivot into Web3 and crypto

20:25 – Why distribution, narrative, and community win now

23:04 – Being real: owning your losses, not just your wins

27:08 – The VC trap and the mismanagement of funding

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