I polled PMs, engineers, and designers asking if they are enjoying their job is more or less with the rise of AI. tl;dr The vast majority of people said they are enjoying their job more. However, almost a fifth of designers are enjoying their job less. If you're a designer and feeling this, what's going on?

"An Army of Experts!" – The End of Software as We Know It Reacting to Live Dealer Comments | Pre-NADA AI #7 My conversation with @ericwilliamrea, CEO of @PodiumHQ. 1:08 How is AI changing dealerships? 4:03 What are the software challenges in dealerships? 6:42 How is AI added to dealerships? 18:45 How does AI personalize customer service? 19:14 What makes a CRM good? 20:03 What is the future of AI? 25:30 How does voice AI help service? 30:07 What are the upcoming plans for Podium?

I’ve been in venture capital for ~2 decades and have sat on many boards, and I’ve never seen the kind of transformation @PodiumHQ just engineered: Annual cash burn went from $95M to $0. AI ARR went $0M to $100M — in 21 months. Here’s what happened… @PodiumHQ had built a communications product for small businesses. It worked, but coming out of the ZIRP era, growth was flattening. We were at a critical moment, Pre-ChatGPT: Was the product a nice-to-have or a need-to-have? It was a problem that needed solving. @ericwilliamrea went into Founder Mode to create a clear need-to-have product. Experimenting with AI in 2023 wasn’t controversial. But as board members, we weren’t sure the product would work or the revenue would stick. Would all of these customers churn? Then @PodiumHQ management made the call: invest more time and money into R&D before hyping the product or going big on GTM. In the first three months, something was clearly different. We’d launched plenty of products before. Nothing had ever taken off this fast. As board members, we wondered (as board members tend to do): was there a catch? Nope. And another three months in, still no catch. Just real value. And now, here we are, 21 months later and AI agent ARR rocketed from $0 to $100M, our overall ARR growth rate is way up and @PodiumHQ has gone from burning $95M a year to $0M. That “AI chatbot” experiment became @PodiumHQ's top employee, singlehandedly driving $100M in ARR. His name is Jerry. Jerry is a customer service agent for auto, home services & wellness businesses. Customers often walk in asking to speak with him. He has hundreds of 5-star Google reviews. He even won “Employee of the Month” 😅Why? Jerry answers text/voice 24/7/365 within ~30 secs. Customers using @PodiumHQ’s Jerry 2.0 are seeing a 30% revenue lift.🚀 Not to mention…Jerry 2.0 can be coached up to any subject in ~60 seconds. I couldn’t be more impressed with CEO @ericwilliamrea and the @PodiumHQ team, who understood that the qualities that make a great AI agent are the same as those that make a great human employee: Knowing the job, industry and playbook, can be coached and work tirelessly. No wonder @OpenAI made Jerry 2.0 a case study: Zero to $100M ARR in 21 months, in > 10,000 customer locations. I’ve watched this go from early conviction to undeniable traction. The market is voting. Find the @OpenAI case study here: openai.com/index/podium /END

“This Is the Worst It’ll Ever Be”—State of Dealership AI and What Dealers Should Be Asking My conversation with Eric Rea, CEO of @PodiumHQ: 0:15 What fueled Podium's rapid growth? 1:07 How did Podium get started? 3:00 How is AI transforming dealerships? 5:42 What makes Jerry AI special? 8:11 Customizing AI for dealers how? 13:08 Will AI replace BDC teams? 16:27 Future AI applications in auto? 26:00 How AI revolutionizes service departments? 32:25 Biggest voice AI challenges today?

A.I. Expert: Rise of the A.I. employee in car dealerships • Hack to convert 99% of customers • Raising $420M for the future of A.I. • Why size matters for language models and more! My conversation with @ericwilliamrea, CEO of @PodiumHQ: twitter.com/CDG_Podcast/stat…

JUST OUT: "Chart of the Century" Update through June 2024 based on yesterday's CPI report. A few observations: 1. The cost of Hospital Services continues to rank No. 1 and has escalated significantly in the past few years. 2. College Tuition continues to rise but at a slower rate in recent years. 3. College Textbook costs have been flat for about the last 8 years, thanks to competition and low-cost (or free) alternatives to traditional textbooks. 4. Increases in the prices of New Cars, Household Furnishings, and Clothing have accelerated in recent years.

🧵 Today I was on @SquawkStreet on @CNBC to talk about the bubble in AI stocks. @GoldmanSachs put out a report warning capex for AI was way too high, given lack of high value use cases. Goldman is right on, but does not address other crippling issues facing AI. Thread. 1/15