Nico Acosta

The hottest role in AI startups right now isn’t Forward Deployed Engineers. It isn't GTM Engineers. It’s Deployment Strategists. Decagon calls it an “Agent Product Manager.” Harvey calls it a “Solutions Architect.” Palantir Technologies has had versions of this role for years. And the salaries are climbing fast: - Decagon: $200k–$285k - Palantir Technologies: $120k–$200k - Figma: $150k–$260k - Ramp: $100k–$180k - Harvey: $190k–$260k So who are these people? They are usually pseudo-technical -- CS or engineering majors, or folks with technical work experience. Many come from 2 years in consulting, IB, or PE, then jump into startups to get their hands dirty. They are young, hungry, polished, and comfortable being in front of customers. What do they actually do? They make sure enterprise AI deployments succeed. A $100k+ deal does not survive on a nice pitch or a self-serve onboarding flow. It survives if the customer sees value in the pilot. That means: - Embedding directly with the customer - Designing prompt logic for specific workflows - Working with engineering to align integrations and data flow - Helping exec teams define their AI roadmap - Running feedback loops into product and GTM Why does this role matter so much? Because enterprise AI is messy. Integrations, data transfer, and adoption make or break a deal. Most buyers are using AI for the first time, and each has unique workflows. Deployment Strategists bridge that gap. They own the outcome. They are accountable for making pilots successful, which often means millions in revenue down the line. At Conversion, Sam Bochner has been leading this work for us. We are now thinking about scaling it into a full team. Because a few successful pilots can fund an entire department, and the cost of failed deployments is too high to ignore. Is this just a rebrand of customer success? Not really. Success is about answering tickets and renewals. Deployment Strategy is about going deep with a few enterprise accounts, extracting maximum value, and ensuring the pilot closes into a multi-year contract. Call it Agent PM, Solutions Architect, or Deployment Strategist. Whatever the title, this is becoming one of the most important roles in AI SaaS.

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PSA to seed and early-stage founders: stop worrying about competition. I’ve spoken to hundreds of late-stage founders, and they all say the same thing. The biggest mistake they see at the early stage is founders obsessing over who else is in their space. When you are pre-PMF, comparing yourself to other buzzy AI startups is a distraction. They already have a defined GTM motion, some level of product-market fit, and a playbook to execute. Their “big new feature” might just be about expanding revenue or building parity. You’re still trying to land your first 10 paying customers. Here’s the truth: 1. Worry about competitors only when you actively lose a deal to them. THESE ARE THE COMPETITORS TO WORRY ABOUT. 2. When a customer chooses someone else, they will usually tell you why. Nine times out of ten it’s not the reason you think. It’s rarely a missing feature. More often it’s pricing, brand trust, or timing. 3. Competitors often move in completely different directions. OpenAI went after consumers, while Anthropic leaned into enterprise and APIs. Playbooks diverge fast. 4. The only real roadmap at the early stage is customer pain. Every conversation, every demo, every user insight. Talk to as many customers as possible. If you spend your time trying to copy what competitors are doing, you will always be a step behind. If you spend your time talking to users, you’ll know exactly what to build next. The path to PMF isn’t found on Twitter threads about “AI competitors.” It’s found in the feedback from the 5 people actually using your product every single day.

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I’ve come to believe that early experiences carry disproportionate weight - far more than we often acknowledge. For designers and builders, “minimum viable” may suffice for validating core functionality, but it rarely earns trust or sparks genuine delight. While velocity matters, I’ve always struggled with the notion that early versions should be merely viable, especially in a world where attention is scarce and emotional resonance is everything. This extends beyond product. Do you show up as the minimum viable version of yourself in your work, your relationships, your craft? I would encourage you to challenge the conventional MVP framework. Replace it with the Minimum Awesome Product. This doesn’t mean it’s fully-featured or pixel perfect. But it should be worthy of attention. Memorable, even evocative in the way it triggered emotion. The kind of product that prompts someone to say, “I didn’t know I needed this, but now I can’t live without it.” You can refine mechanics over time, but the emotional experience of a first interaction is singular and unrecoverable. Don’t settle for viability. Build something worth remembering… and make it awesome! ❤️‍🔥

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I often see marketing leaders respond with insufficient urgency to creative performance degradation. I view any meaningful drop in creative performance as an all-hands-on-deck emergency that needs to be addressed aggressively. A few years ago, in one of the most popular posts on Mobile Dev Memo, I proposed the idea of a "creative performance half-life": the point after which creative performance degrades precipitously because of saturation. That half-life is essentially a replacement timeline. If the creative production process requires two weeks from concept to deliverable into testing, then any significant decline in creative performance means that the creative production process either malfunctioned or became misaligned with market conditions *two weeks ago*. That's a catastrophe. The team should respond accordingly by dramatically increasing production output. This is why I advocate for working with a large number of agencies and freelancers, since their output can be flexibly scaled at a moment's notice. But the broader point is that a considerable drop in creative performance reveals a process problem in the past that will have accumulated over the half-life of the advertiser's creatives. Fixing it now requires a deliberate expansion of creative output and diversity.

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In every product leadership role I’ve taken, my key to success was spending as much time on recruiting as I did on product. Great teams build great products. I believe building teams deserves the same craft and intentionality as building the product itself. And with AI giving teams unprecedented leverage, teams that hire top talent faster will emerge as the winners. Given how much I value recruiting, it’s fitting that Paraform was the first investment I led at Felicis. Paraform is an AI-enabled, recruiter-first marketplace that helps companies hire 3x faster and helps recruiters earn 3x - 5x more than traditional recruiting roles. Their marketplace and tools give elite recruiters more speed, leverage, and time dedicated to helping companies hire their hardest-to-fill roles. The traction to date speaks for itself. Companies like Palantir, Ramp, Rippling, Cursor, Windsurf, and Decagon all rely on Paraform to help them hire the best people. Some recruiters have already earned $1M on their platform, and Paraform’s pace is accelerating. I’m so excited to partner with John Kim, Jeffrey Li, and the entire Paraform team on building the future of recruiting. Read more about why we invested here: https://lnkd.in/g6zb8ZrY

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Yesterday Clay hit $100M ARR and I shared a post on the GTM bets that got us here. Today, I'm sitting down with our Head of Finance to dive deep on the business - metrics, our view on the AI market, and the path to $1B. Karan often gets this question from candidates: "Look, I have to dedicate my livelihood to Clay. All the upside of my equity is baked into one asset. How should I frame the real risk/reward?" It's a great question! So I wanted to use this video to go beyond the tactics and share how we think about the business holistically. The fundamentals, market dynamics and where we're really going. Some of what we cover: - The AI market and why GTM is actually the least crowded - Cohort data that shocked even us (enterprises never churn!) - How we've built an entire economy around Clay - The three things that create our customer flywheel - Why we're not burning cash while growing at an insane rate - The vectors to $1B: new geos, personas, use cases, channels, and verticals At the end, we get candid about the real risks and why World of Warcraft helps explain them. Watch here 👇

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Founders: every rule (about fundraising and everything else) is artificial and meant to be broken. For example, consider the “rule” that the lead investor should invest at least X% of the entire round. It’s BS. For example, the amazing Kirsten Green led Bonobos’ $30m Series C round with $1m (and helped the founder raise the remaining $29m). Ignore the so-called rules. Do the right thing for your company. Be the exception.

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Two trends in fundraising that I’m seeing on a daily basis: 1/ The "we'll monetize later" era for infrastructure startups is dead "We'll figure out revenue once we have users" / "we're focused on adoption first"/ "monetization comes later" This worked in 2021. It doesn't work now. Today’s market won’t reward research organizations or companies that believe in perfection over getting it in users' hands. If you don't have a clear path to revenue… you won't get funded. period. VCs aren't writing checks hoping you'll figure it out later. 2/ "Vibe ARR" is everywhere Remember Jasper? hyper growth, but the model companies ate them alive. We're seeing this again. Companies growing really quickly on point-in-time technology that isn't defensible These companies look amazing on paper. Growth charts going up and to the right. But if you think models are getting better and becoming platform companies, many solutions become obsolete. 

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In 2026, everything I do will be in service of founders. Specifically: helping founders cross the line from 'builder' to 'operator.' It’s the first Sunday, and I felt inspired to share a mini-manifesto for the year ahead. This transition (from builder to operator) is where I see many high-potential founders struggle most. Building is the easy part (for most of you). - You can ship. - You can hustle. - You can close early deals. Where companies actually die? Business systems and operations. I’ve helped build three different businesses past $20M ARR. Never alone. Always with teams. Always with systems. At a certain point, founder-led everything becomes the bottleneck. Sales is usually the first place this shows up. When sales lives in the founder’s head + inbox, growth caps. Not because the founder can’t sell, but because the business can’t operate without them. From ‘Founder Chapel’ to ‘David Beats Goliath,’ and through the projects and partnerships I take on this year, everything will serve one goal: Helping founders transform into EXCEPTIONAL operators. The kind people want to work with, follow, invest in, and trust with real responsibility. Builders are common these days. Operators are much rarer. Companies scale when systems carry the weight founders were never meant to carry alone.

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Three years ago, we launched Wisdom Ventures with a clear intention to support founders building at the intersection of well-being, human connection, and transformative tech. Since then, we’ve made 37 investments from our oversubscribed "minimum viable" $10M Fund I, backing early-stage companies in physical and mental wellbeing, women’s health, ethical AI, and human connection-centered innovation. We’ve always known we are on to something—what we didn’t expect was how quickly the data would back it up. Recent industry benchmarks show that most 2022-vintage emerging funds are experiencing the usual J-curve dip. In contrast, Wisdom Ventures is showing strong early performance: 📈 Net IRR (internal rate of return): >10% 📊 MOIC (multiple on invested capital): ~2x* ⏰ Median investment age: 18 months 💥 ....and # of our companies have a diverse founder by gender, race, or sexual orientation: 75% As we get ready to make our 38th and final investment out of Fund I and start deploying out of our significantly larger Fund II (first close May 1st), we’re filled with gratitude—for our founders, our LPs, our early supporters, our early believers, and this growing movement toward a more conscious, connected future, fueled by innovation from the ❤️ *Based on most current reports **Not in photo: Our fantastic operating partner, Zoe Rogers #WisdomVentures #ImpactInvesting #ConsciousTech #Wellbeing #AIForGood #FutureOfWork #VentureCapital

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