Week 2 in SF - how AI startups grow here

Week 2 in SF.

Here's how AI startups are actually growing here.

Week 1 I got distracted. Hit a bunch of events. Most were noise. Great builders, but mostly early-stage founders still figuring it out (me included).

The real signal came from a handful of people already scaling fast here.

Here's what was clear.

1) It's go big or go home.

SF is not a place to bootstrap.

The competitors around you are raising $20M rounds. That scares you and motivates you at the same time, especially on GTM. You either play that game or you go home.

2) GTM is moving back in person.

Everyone here runs cold email, LinkedIn and cold calling. That part is table stakes.

But a lot of the real growth is happening in person again. Dinners, small rooms, coffees.

3) They're obsessed with mind share, and they test everything.

Not many of them are actually from LA. But a lot reference LA's creator economy, applied to B2B. LA is media, SF is tech, and the two are slowly merging.

They want to go viral, even when viral doesn't book a single call. Mind share matters more than almost anything here.

So they get creative, and they run more experiments than anyone I've seen. Not just on content. On outbound, on every GTM channel. Split test after split test.

That's the biggest difference I've seen.

Then there's the founder density.

You grab a coffee and the person across the table is building something genuinely interesting. You walk away having learned something. Every single day.

That alone is worth being here.

So we made the call.

We're moving OXYGEN's company operations to SF.

If you're in sf and building in GTM, hmu :)

PS: I've started running to the Golden Gate Bridge after work. Genuinely one of the best parts of being here.