What I learned from visiting a $40B AI company

On June 28th, 2020, I loaded up our toaster oven into the passenger seat in my convertible M4.

It was the last of hundreds of items as we packed up our house in Burlingame (a suburb of San Francisco).

It was the midst of Covid.

Two months earlier, I had transitioned out as CEO of Ampush, and I remember the feeling of tremendous sadness as I drove down the 101.

Ten years, my first big company, two children born there, married while living there, bought our first house there and hundreds of other small life events.

Between Covid, selling the company in 2022 and a lot of my close friends leaving San Francisco, I somehow hadn't been back in FIVE YEARS! That all changed May 1st.

And let me tell you, I won't make that mistake again. Expect me back there — at least every six months. There’s a reason why so many great companies and people thrived in The Bay Area!

I'll share the highlights, but first let me give you

• I arrived on a Thursday night, along with our two "big kids," who were both born there

  

• We spent (mostly) a family weekend going back to all the places we lived, drinking Philz coffee and being tourists. There was a ton of nostalgia, but also validation in our move to St. Louis.

• We visited Figure.AI (more on that below) and Supercell with the kids.

• The family left Sunday, and I felt sad. But then I spent three days reconnecting with all my business friends from a decade of living there. It included a big CMO dinner, a Bootstrapped Giants meetup, an Ampush reunion and tons of 1x1 catch ups.

• From Wednesday to Friday, I went to the Redwoods for a conference with partners from NextView Ventures.

The top highlight, without a doubt, was visiting Figure.AI. I'm grateful to call the founder/CEO, Brett Adcock, a friend.

Brett is the most intense human I know, but he's also got a huge heart: He spent over one hour with my family, fielding questions from my 10 year-old and 8 year-old.

I was lucky to be an early investor (thanks, Sam Parr/Hampton!) and the company is raising right now at $40 BILLION valuation, after four years.

Let me tell you: I think it’s undervalued.

There are tree things that absolutely blew me away from the visit — and one huge bonus:

This is the easiest one to get, but it’s still worth dwelling on. The world is designed for humans. Humanoid robots can plug right in and do things humans don't love.

The TAM is BILLIONS of robots, making Figure a TRILLION dollar company.

It turns out, human bodies are absolutely amazing. We can move and shift in millions of ways. Creating "hardware" that's even close to that is nearly impossible.

Programming it to do what we do is even harder (although GenAI is making it easier).

And if all that wasn't hard enough, these robots need to cost less than a car to be viable. The problem is mind-melting.

…With which Brett is solving the problem.

This was by far the most mind-blowing thing.

Any issue we could think of and asked, it was clear Brett had thought of it 100x, tried 10 ways to solve it and either had the answer or the reason why it didn't make sense to solve it.

All of us left inspired with our jaws on the floor. I can't know for sure what will happen to the company, but it felt like walking around with Steve Jobs as he was building the first iPhone.

The bonus was both my kids said it was the highlight of THEIR trip, and it was fun, as a dad, to show them what's possible.

Every person I met with was working on AI in some capacity.

The obvious ones, like OpenAI or Perplexity, sure.

But then one friend was using AI for text message commerce, another was rebuilding an AI CRM and another was re-imagining prototyping with AI.

You could feel the collective enthusiasm for the next big thing and just how special it was to be concentrated in one relatively small area.

I could FEEL a surge of energy in my body that I remembered when I first moved to San Francisco. I called my wife, "The future is being built here, like it always has been."

This reminded me again of "mobile" back in 2010. It’s BIG — really BIG.

It didn't make me want to move back. Instead, I feel grateful I have access to the city and people there while living outside the "bubble.”

At one point, a friend said to me, "I'm sure people are talking like this about AI in St. Louis." I looked at him like he was crazy, "No, they are not!"

It made me realize not only how big the opportunity is, but how lucky I am to be able to learn from San Francisco and deploy elsewhere!

It was fun to take a trip just us four to reconnect with each other, while also returning to where our kids had a big chunk of their early childhood.

It was special for a lot of reasons. We also had some special hangouts with friends and family we hadn't seen forever.

I hosted a CMO dinner on Monday night with ~20 marketing leaders who were former or current clients and friends.

We covered topics ranging from tariffs to AI, but the real connection came when people talked about raising children or their life struggles.

It was a great reminder that we are all humans first, then business people. Or my favorite saying, "Business is just an excuse to meet people and make friends."

On Tuesday, I held an Ampush reunion. People from different eras of the company all showed up throughout the night and it was beautiful.

We have multiple Ampush marriages, friendships that transcend the company and so many fun stories to swap.

I felt proud knowing that the most enduring thing I've done was around shaping people’s lives.

I could probably write another five emails about this trip. It had a full range of emotions and multiple different stages (but no parking tickets, somehow!).

Suffice to say, it really filled my cup and I'll be back in the Bay soon!

jesse

P.S. All my companies use the same bookkeeping firm. If you want an intro to a great finance team, hit reply and ask.