Question 1

What patterns appear across thousands of AI startup pitches?

Accepted Answer

_Radical lean teams, SMB software, overlooked compliance plays._

> The core problem is that AI, by design, is average. It's spectacular at pattern recognition and synthesis, but it produces the most statistically likely output — not the most surprising, not the most brave, not the most emotionally resonant. ### What Made Steve Jobs Leadership Special Let's look at Apple in the iPod era.

— [AI Cuts Creative Teams: What Companies Must Learn About AI Leadership](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2026/02/13/ai-cuts-creative-teams-what-companies-must-learn-about-ai-leadership/) · _Forbes_

> awesome. Now, we tried to actually welcome you by using ElevenLabs with an Irish accent and saying, "Hello, Savita our distinguished speaker." Now, when you look at the text-to-speech industry, like you were at a startup, you got acquired by Cisco, and now generative AI comes in. ElevenLabs is funded throughout the roof. And why is that?

— [Unit 5 Full Transcript](https://www.lutzfinger.com/ecornell/) · _eCornell course_

Question 2

Why are radically lean teams the future?

Accepted Answer

_How AI compresses the team size needed to ship._

> I mean, UiPath is a huge company, Automation Anywhere. There are many other players, but it has some kind of limit. So is it now because we have AI, artificial intelligence, can we now do really smart tasks? Is that the idea of agents?

— [AI Agents: The Future of Work?](https://content.rss.com/episodes/204999/1798482/lutzandjasper/2024_12_12_13_17_56_3a2b23d3-5df8-4522-bae2-c510e90c159a.mp3) · _Podcast - THE EDGE_

> So same as the stock market, people were preempting kind of future rounds and future value increase without knowing if that would actually happen. So the backlash that comes here is that we see some realism, oh, wow, it takes longer. It's a research project.

— [AI Gold Rush: Is the Market Overheating?](https://content.rss.com/episodes/204999/1602273/lutzandjasper/2024_08_07_20_53_32_c47d1207-608b-49c2-8e3c-ccd123387e33.mp3) · _Podcast - THE EDGE_

Q&A, Startups

What patterns appear across thousands of AI startup pitches?

Why are radically lean teams the future?