Either ride the wave or get crushed by it

Inside Gateway X and the Bootstrapped Giants community, I have gotten one question more than any other in the past year:

My answer has been:

Before I go on, let's pause a bit to understand what's going on.

In my view, AI is a once-in-a-generation shift. It’s on the same level as the PC, dot-com, or mobile revolutions (if not, bigger).

So first off, let's show some gratitude for this incredible opportunity in front of all of us!

Now, much of the hype is around OpenAI, NVIDIA, and even DeepSeek.

It's worth following and understanding. These are platform-type companies that are likely to be the next Googles.

One rung down is the "application" layer or apps that sit on top of some of these platforms.

Every industry will likely be transformed from applications and honestly, much of how it will shake out is totally unclear.

Will there be different AI software tools for different verticals?

Or will OpenAI just eat everything? Or will services businesses build bespoke AIs?!

WHO KNOWS? The truth is no one knows.

So running out to start an AI company will make sense for some people, but not most.

Instead, like computers or the internet, AI is sure to transform lots of existing businesses in some obvious and other less obvious ways.

I personally don't buy the "everyone is losing their jobs" hype. I believe AI will increase productivity and GDP, like many other technologies did before it!

And I do have some half-baked ideas for how AI will impact GrowthAssistant, Unbloat, Aux Insights, and Bootstrapped Giants.

But rather than trying to guess, we are doing something very different. We are exposing ourselves, learning, and staying nimble to opportunities.

In other words, right now, I see more value in saying "I don't know" rather than "Here is what will happen."

With that said, here's our 2025 game plan for tackling AI.

I'll admit, it's only been a few months since I've downloaded the apps for ChatGPT and Perplexity and started using them regularly.

I just learned what an agent is. There isn't much AI usage across the companies.

Step one for me and our other leaders is to learn it.

We'll do that in a multitude of ways. Start using the various tools to accomplish tasks.

I've used ChatGPT now to do everything from drafting an email to summarizing a pitchbook to even spiritual analysis of scriptures!

Our CTO Adam is setting up internal weekly syncs across the companies to teach different concepts. We're interacting with a lot of AI folks externally to learn what might be possible!

But leaders are getting their hands dirty and asking team members about AI. We will do that for a couple of months, and personally, I want to live it myself before asking too much.

We are already sourcing internal business problems, ranging from resume reviews to content creation to managing contacts and outreach.

We will continue to do so while we think of step 1.

The Gateway X team wants to build (almost) our own internal AI agency to learn how easy/hard it truly is to solve business problems.

How much time, iteration? How good is the actual AI? How much $$ can it make companies and what's involved in that?

As we solve business problems, "cool" ideas invariably come up - we are capturing these on a backlog to explore later.

Some recent use cases:

1. We dumped all of Unbloat content into ChatGPT and it spit out an investment memo that was halfway complete.

2. Adam fed AI a bunch of context for Unbloat’s marketing and AI created 6-email drip campaigns that are 90% ready to ship.

3. AI is ranking our relationship with my LinkedIn connections relative to other LinkedIn connections. That enables us to ask the right person for a mutual intro–with 70-80% accuracy!

Our focus:

For now, we are keeping our focus on growth marketing. This is where I have unfair distribution, relationships, and a pre-existing knowledge base.

Do I think AI will transform healthcare? YES! But that's someone else's opportunity.

Once we properly know AI and solve real business problems, the next step is to make every business AI first. I see this showing up in two ways:

A) Internal systems and processes.

Maybe in 6 months, this newsletter will partially be written by AI. Maybe for our next Accelerator, I’ll simply talk to AI and it will make my slide decks.

For GrowthAssistant, we could use AI to help with recruiting, marketing, and beyond.

B) Make it part of the offer/product.

Maybe we’ll launch AI accelerators to the BG community. Of course, every GrowthAssistant is going to learn AI, and that will be a big part of how we take the service to the next level.

Aux, with all its private equity relationships, will inevitably sell a project using AI to up-level a company.

After we take the 3 above steps, I think we'll be ready and armed with tons of experience, both internal and external proof points, AND lots of ideas.

This can lead to one of two things or both:

A) Launch?

Maybe we’ll launch new ideas that are really AI first and have a marketing tie-in. TBD on the ideas, but we know how to take something from a napkin to a profitable business. So we’ll do that with AI.

B) Buy and Transform?

Or maybe we take this platform with its profits and scale and buy businesses that we’ll transform with our AI playbook. If we do everything I wrote above successfully, perhaps this is a better play!

It remains to be seen.

That’s my plan. It starts with heavy learning, which I’m doing now.

What should I know about?

How are you using AI?

What possibilities do you see?

In my annual plan for 2025, I wrote that AI will be my focus. Fill me in and let’s learn together.

jesse