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Top pick: Noah Shinn on Invest Like the Best
Resource: Patrick O'Shaughnessy's interview with Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct (YouTube, Spotify) . O'Shaughnessy is the host, so his own promotion doesn't count as an outside signal. He says it is Shinn's first long conversation about Instinct, a personal AI assistant that is invite-only, has spent nothing on marketing and is growing "roughly 10% A DAY" . The episode covers why Instinct has no app, buying compute months ahead of demand, how users learn to trust it with a credit card, and agents coordinating with other people's agents .
Recommended by: Scott Belsky, who says there are "so many gems on consumer agent re-imagination of the internet." He picks out two themes: the "ROI on trust," and the idea that "the long-tail of user preferences are the ultimate moat in consumer AI" . Sarah Guo also shared it. Her list of highlights includes why users give Instinct their credit cards, "the role of craft in the age of AI," and "the end of apps and websites" .
Why it's the top pick: two investors recommended it independently, and each named specific ideas. For anyone building consumer agents, the case for listening is its focus on trust.
Packy McCormick's sources from his Airbound essay
McCormick invested in Airbound's $37M Series A . His essay on the company points readers to three sources:
- The Box by Marc Levinson. He calls it an "excellent book" and "a 540-page ode to the idea that even a seemingly minor improvement in transportation technology can alter the global flow of goods, and therefore capital and people." This is the book behind his argument about drone logistics .
- Rahul Sanghi's Tigerfeathers piece "Airbound: Delivering Abundance". He calls it "awesome" and says it has "a lot more fantastic detail" on founder Naman Pushp's journey, so readers should "read it" .
- David Senra's conversation with Ribbit founder Micky Malka. He calls it "great." The idea he takes from it is Malka's: many of today's most successful young founders spent COVID "sucking information" from YouTube, and that left them naive enough to think "anything is possible" .
Also noted
- Grady's AI talk (Loom). The speaker, @gradypb, recorded it for the Boston College Investment Committee and describes it as "not a sales pitch, it's just a reflection on what we're seeing" . Sarah Guo recommended it, saying he is "a clearer thinker than 99.9% of investors" even "on an average friday morning" .
- @AtalantaArdenM's essay "Human Frailty". Patrick Collison called it a "very good post... on the role of suffering in art" .
- Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen. It came up in a Lenny's Podcast talk (video) by a product leader who worked on Instagram Stories and now works on Google Search . He loves its jobs-to-be-done framework: "we don't use products, we hire them to do things for us." He says the book shows how to draw those needs out of users' own stories .
- Amp It Up by Frank Slootman. Higgsfield CEO Alex Mashrabov recommended it on 20VC (video). He says it convinced him a no-nonsense culture can scale a company and support enterprise sales, and he has "watched all his interviews" . He adds a caveat: that style can come "at the sacrifice of product advancement" .
- David George's article "OpenAI Understands Something Important and Rare". Sam Altman shared it with "Pretty excited for DevDay tomorrow. We have found a new thing" . George argues that OpenAI will win because it is good at "creating new kinds of customers" and has "the most durable distribution strategy," not because it has the best models . Altman runs OpenAI, so treat this as self-interested promotion rather than a neutral endorsement.
Sam Altman linked to @DavidGeorge83’s post featuring “OpenAI Understands Something Important and Rare”. The article argues that OpenAI’s advantage lies in creating new customer behavior and durable distribution, rather than simply having the best models. Altman accompanied the link with: “Pretty excited for DevDay tomorrow. We have found a new thing.”
A Michael Seibel–Dalton discussion recommends using AI to research the early histories of your 10 favorite companies—especially how long each took to launch, reach 100 users, and reach $1 million in revenue—and compare those trajectories with your assumptions. The takeaway is that real company stories may be surprising, and the point is to learn from them, not necessarily copy their paths.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommends his video conversation with Instinct founder Noah Shinn, described as Shinn’s first long conversation about the company, and closes the post with “Enjoy.” The conversation covers personal AI, trust and privacy, safety, Instinct’s business model, and growth. Full conversation
In a follow-up clip, O’Shaughnessy highlights Shinn’s claim that 40% of Instinct users give the agent credit-card access within three weeks and retention reaches roughly 80% after trust is established. Shinn says users control how much data they share and can take it back, and describes safeguards that screen content and monitor agent actions.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy promoted his conversation with Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct, describing it as Shinn’s first long conversation about the company and inviting viewers to “Enjoy!” The discussion covers personal AI assistants, trust and privacy, Instinct’s business model, and growth. Watch the conversation. In the linked post, O’Shaughnessy calls Instinct’s speaker-shopping task his “personal favorite use case so far”: the assistant compared options from a gym photo and ordered his selection, including a longer cable it inferred he needed from the image.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommends his long conversation with Instinct founder Noah Shinn, describing it as his first long conversation about the company and inviting viewers to “Enjoy!” . He calls Shinn’s thinking on securing compute fascinating amid Instinct’s roughly 10%-daily growth . Full conversation.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy shared his conversation with Instinct founder Noah Shinn as a viewing recommendation (“Enjoy!”), describing it as Shinn’s first long conversation about the company. It covers AI-agent use cases, trust and privacy, safety, Instinct’s business model, and growth . Watch the conversation.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommends his conversation with Instinct founder Noah Shinn (“Enjoy!”), describing it as Shinn’s first long conversation about the company; topics include AI agents, trust and privacy, the business model, growth and compute, and personal-assistant design.
Alex named Frank Slootman as a CEO he would most like on his board, said reading Slootman’s Amp It Up showed him that a no-nonsense culture can support rapid company scaling and enterprise go-to-market, and said he was a huge fan who had watched all of Slootman’s interviews.
Sarah Guo shared @patrick_oshag’s conversation with Instinct founder Noah Shinn, highlighting its discussion of building trust, agents buying things, the launch, shareable products, craft in AI, tech’s essential value, and the possible end of apps and websites.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy recommended his video conversation with Instinct founder Noah Shinn, inviting followers to “Enjoy!” The conversation covers personal AI assistants, trust and privacy, Instinct’s business model, and growth and compute.
Patrick Collison called a post by @AtalantaArdenM “very good,” recommending its discussion of the role of suffering in art; read the post.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommends his video conversation with Noah Shinn, Instinct’s founder, describing it as Shinn’s first long conversation about the company and closing with “Enjoy!” The interview covers Instinct’s personal AI assistant, trust and safety, business model, growth and compute, and future plans. Conversation
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommends his Invest Like the Best conversation with Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct, signing off “Enjoy!”; it covers Instinct’s personal AI assistant, including trust and privacy, safety and security, its business model, and growth. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
Elad Gil shared three YouTube links in one thread: video, video, and video. The posts provide no titles, creator names, or stated reason for sharing.
Sarah Guo recommends Grady’s reflection on AI, calling him “a clearer thinker than 99.9% of investors” even on an average Friday morning . The recommended item is Grady’s Loom recording: a rough, non-sales-pitch reflection on what he is seeing in AI, first recorded for Boston College’s Investment Committee and shared more broadly after his partners encouraged him . Watch the recording.
Sarah Guo shared last week’s No Priors Pod episode as an “ICYMI” recommendation; it features @mjlee_2014, CEO of Seq Holdings, discussing AI-transformation targets and teams, where incumbents may still win, lessons from moving from investing to operating, permanent capital, applying AI in a regional bank, and why “AI private equity” works better at scale.
Bill Gurley endorsed Jensen Huang’s X post announcing NVIDIA’s Open Agent Safety Platform as an example of how mature enterprises solve security problems, contrasting it with braggadocious press releases that create panic. Jensen Huang’s post
Chamath Palihapitiya endorsed Jensen Huang’s post about NVIDIA’s Open Agent Safety Platform, calling it “a good lesson” that frontier technologies can create wonder and be thoughtfully managed.
Packy McCormick, who says he invested in Airbound, recommends three pieces of content.
- He calls David Senra’s conversation with Ribbit founder Micky Malka “great”; Malka’s takeaway is that many successful young founders learned broadly on YouTube during COVID and came to believe anything was possible.
- He urges readers to read Rahul Sanghi’s “Airbound: Delivering Abundance”, praising its additional detail on Naman Pushp’s journey.
- He calls Marc Levinson’s The Box an “excellent book,” describing it as a case for how even seemingly minor transportation improvements can alter the global flow of goods, capital, and people.
The speaker, who describes building products at Instagram and working on Google Search, recommends Clayton Christensen’s Competing Against Luck. They value its Jobs to Be Done framework: people “hire” products to accomplish things, and discovering those needs involves drawing out users’ stories and circumstances .
