Only the paranoid survive.

The fear of missing out, and not adapting, during the AI revolution

AI is changing every industry so quickly, and I wake up everyday wondering if we’re missing out. Here’s why I’m paranoid, and why you should be too:

AI-native startups are scaling at an unheard of rate - Cursor (AI code editor) hit $100M ARR in just 12m (with just 20 people), Loveable (text to app builder) hit $50M ARR in 6m (with just 40 people). The advances in AI have made it possible to create never-seen-before applications that are incredibly valuable (ChatGPT, Midjourney, ElevenLabs)

Every market is changing - the opportunity is massive. Every company on the planet is now looking to adopt AI - across teams, products, and workflows. You can enter almost any industry and make it fundamentally better with AI. There isn’t a single company that wouldn’t benefit, and because it’s still early, there’s almost no saturation.

Its easier than ever to create an app - the cost of building an application is arguably at a historical low. 12 year olds are now building apps, as you can now simply describe through chat-like text what you want to build, and it gets built. This means opportunities are being seized fast, and every day that goes by, your window to win in this unbelievably rare moment gets smaller.

What was good 6m ago is bad today - Customers expect more, because they’re seeing incredible things and the bar to what is good has sky rocketed. 1-person teams are able to develop movie-grade marketing ads, applications are being built faster and better (no excuse for poor looking UIs now), and customers notice.

You can do 10x more, with 10x less, 10x faster - In the past, large companies could outspend and out-execute you with sheer manpower. That’s no longer true. A single founder, using today’s modern way of working, can now outperform entire departments. That’s why even blue-chip companies need to adapt.

The investment in AI is off the charts - OpenAI are building a $500B (yes billion) mega factory, Microsoft spends $50B a year on AI R&D, Elon Musk raised $6B for xAI.

Its an exciting time to be alive. I’m just worried I’m not taking this once in a lifetime chance to win. I believe every founder is feeling this.

I think about AI in two ways, which are the next 2 sections of the article:

1. Building a superior product - creating something far more useful and differentiated for users.

2. Driving superior company performance - every team can now move faster and do more with fewer people and less resources.

I thought it was only right that I used AI to generate this image for the article

Building a superior product

A question I keep asking myself is: “With everything changing so fast, what should I actually be doing so I don’t miss out?”. This helped led me to focus on outcomes first. It sounds obvious, but originally my thinking was really scattered:

• Should we be building an AI product?

• What industries will benefit most from the rise in LLMs?

• Is TryHackMe at risk? What’s defensible? What should we be doing?

• What will the world look like in 6 months if I don’t adapt?

• OpenAI is booming, what can I take/steal/learn?

Steve Jobs famously said you should start with the user experience, and work backwards - not start with the technology and see how to make it fit. So ask yourself what are you actually trying to do? As a manager is it to “get the best work from my team as fast as possible?”, or as a founder is it “how do we solve a real problem for our users better than anyone else?”.

To get a real advantage, don’t just wrap a service around ChatGPT - build and own something unique. Everyone’s using the same public LLMs, but real leverage comes from data no one else has. That kind of context makes products smarter - and harder to copy. Think Tesla with millions of cars on the road training their self-driving models, or GitHub Copilot learning from 420 million code repos.

Over the next few years we’re going to see some revolutionary new platforms and apps come out. OpenAI just acquired Jony Ive and his design company to build what they believe is the next wave of computing devices. There is so much opportunity, both for existing products and new. Its up to you to take advantage of this or leave it to those who can execute and win.

Questions you should ask yourself:

• What problem am I actually trying to solve for users?

• What data or unique value do you have that no one else does?

Driving superior company performance

Your competitors, and even colleagues, are using AI. They’re automating the repetitive, boring tasks and focusing on high-leverage work. Michael Porter said, superior performance comes from creating unique value, not just doing the same things better. The fastest way to create that unique value is to move fast and efficiently - and AI is how you get there.

At TryHackMe, soon using AI won’t be optional. It’ll be the new baseline. We’ll set expectations within the company, and include it in performance reviews.

Each team will be expected to actively embrace AI. Rethinking how they work. I’ll expect everyone to build and run their own AI agents. Staff will map their value chain (the key activities that create value for TryHackMe), identify repeatable workflows, and create agents to supercharge efficiency:

• Sales → agent that pulls prospect insights (company + individual), prepares personalised sales enablement and presentation material

• Product & Engineering → agents for prototyping, and increasing development velocity

• Marketing → agent acting like a mini SEO agency + social content assistant

• Data → agent that pulls from GA, product usage, finance - making insights self-serve for everyone

It also means that before any team can ask for more headcount or resources, they must demonstrate why they cant get what they’re doing with AI. We’ll also look for examples of it during interviews.

Interestingly 96% of the TryHackMe team already use AI - but most only scratch the surface with basic ChatGPT prompts. We need to go deeper. There’s so much more - if that’s all you’re using, you’re really missing out.

This shift applies to me too. I’m learning as much as possible - because if we don’t adapt, we die. It’s blunt, but true. Companies are building faster than ever. If we don’t keep up, we fall behind - on product, on execution, on everything.

I’m also seeing the team share success stories, and want to encourage this more

We spent $21k on an SEO agency, but ChatGPT gave us better and more actionable advice that yield better results.

Automatically reaching out to lost B2B deals to understand more.

Andy Grove’s Book

Only the Paranoid Survive (1998) describes strategic inflection points - moments when everything changes, and you either adapt or get wiped out. That’s exactly what AI is doing today. Every company is being forced to rethink how they work, what they build, and what “good” even looks like. It’s why I keep questioning if we’re moving fast enough, solving the right problems, or if someone else already is.

Here are a few key takeaways from the book - I’d highly recommend reading it (I’ve asked our entire leadership team to do the same):

• We’re at an inflection point, and if we don’t adapt, we’ll get beaten.

• Great managers are able to adapt - what worked in the past, won’t work (or be acceptable) now.

• Managers should have budget to experiment with new techniques and products.

• There needs to be a sense of urgency around the change - from top to bottom.

• The entire company needs to make an active effort to learn new skills to thrive.

Why being paranoid is a good thing

I use my insistent FOMO to keep pushing things forward and improving. It forces me to constantly question if we’re moving fast enough, or building the right things.

We’re in an interesting point in history. I’m not interested in watching it happen. Not just because if we don’t move now and adapt we’ll lose, but because the opportunities in this new way of working - and what we can now build - are too big to ignore.

Thanks for reading. I’m sharing a few more thoughts on my Slack - join here (its free).