Founder Fridays No. 189
Agents Do Jobs -- The Hunt For Bitcoin's Creator -- Enterprise AI Is Real Now
Happy Friday.
Agents Do Jobs
Most founders building AI agents are automating the wrong things first — they’re reaching for complex, one-off workflows when the highest-ROI agent is almost always the single most boring, repetitive task someone on their team does every single day. The gap between a chatbot and an agent is the gap between a tool and an employee: agents don’t just respond, they perceive, reason, act, and loop until a goal is done — and that “while not done” loop, hooked into your actual systems, is where the 171% ROI enterprises are reporting actually comes from. This week, ask every person on your team to name the one task they do daily that feels like it could be taught to a new hire in 20 minutes — that list is your agent backlog, ranked by frequency and embarrassment, and you should have a no-code prototype of the top item running before Friday. One reliable agent on a high-frequency workflow compounds fast: it frees a person’s time, creates a logged, auditable process, and gives you a proof-of-concept you can show investors or customers as evidence you’re building an ops advantage that’s hard to copy. The AI Corner (6 minutes)
The Hunt for Bitcoin’s Creator
The New York Times just published its most comprehensive investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, and the evidence points to Adam Back, the 55-year-old CEO of Blockstream and creator of Hashcash, the proof-of-work system that became foundational to Bitcoin mining. John Carreyrou, the journalist who broke the Theranos story, spent a year analyzing overlapping timelines, matching writing patterns and connecting Back’s cryptographic work to Bitcoin’s architecture. Back flatly denied it, calling the evidence “circumstantial interpretation” rather than definitive cryptographic proof. For founders in crypto and Web3, the deeper lesson is that Bitcoin’s value has only grown precisely because it operates independently of any single creator, proving that the strongest protocols are the ones that transcend their founders. NYT (22 minutes)
Enterprise AI Is Real Now
That widely-cited MIT stat claiming 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail is almost certainly wrong — hard internal data from a16z shows 29% of the Fortune 500 are already live, paying AI customers, less than 3.5 years after ChatGPT launched, which is faster enterprise penetration than any previous technology wave. The pattern behind every breakout enterprise AI use case — coding, support, legal, healthcare — is the same: the work is text-based, the output is verifiable, there’s a human in the loop as a natural safety valve, and you don’t need 100% accuracy to deliver clear ROI; the sectors still waiting for their moment share the opposite traits: physical world, interpersonal relationships, regulatory friction, unverifiable outcomes. If you’re building or pitching in a sector that hasn’t broken out yet, run this checklist against your use case this week: Is the output verifiable? Is there a clean human escalation path? Is the work text-based? Does your buyer already measure success in quantifiable metrics? If you hit all four, you have a credible “why now” for investors — if you’re missing two or more, figure out which constraint you’re actually solving before your next pitch. Accounting and auditing jumped nearly 20 points on model capability benchmarks in the last four months — founders who are already building in the next wave of sectors, with real customer infrastructure in place before the capability unlocks arrive, will be the ones who capture the market when it tips. A16Z (9 minutes)
Founder FAQ: What Are the 10 Contracts Every Startup Should Have on Hand?
Most founders scramble to draft agreements in the middle of a deal, which is exactly the wrong time to be negotiating legal terms under pressure. The 10 contracts every startup should have ready to go are: an advisor agreement, an independent contractor agreement, an employment offer letter, a CIIAA (confidential information and invention assignment agreement), a restricted stock purchase agreement, a stock option grant, an NDA, a master service agreement, a board consent template, and a separation agreement. Each one protects a different flank, from securing your IP and aligning incentives with equity grants to streamlining client deals with an MSA that eliminates renegotiation on every project. Having these agreements custom-drafted before you need them isn’t just good legal hygiene, it’s a competitive advantage that lets you close deals, onboard talent and protect your company without losing a single day of momentum. Westaway (8 minutes)
Startup Funding Guides
I’ve put together a series of guides to equip founders to excel at fundraising. These guides break down the deal term-by-term and give you negotiation tips so that you can speak to investors with confidence.
Convertible Note: Guide / Video
Extending Your Runway with General Counsel
In this economy, every startup is looking to lower burn rate and extend runway. We helped a Series A, generative AI company drastically reduce their legal spend by switching to our General Counsel service. When we first met the owners, they were working with a big law firm and felt they were overpaying for basic legal work. Nearly every month, they got a hefty bill just to cover equity grants, contract reviews and lawyer calls/emails. When they switched to General Counsel at Westaway, they:
Got more personal service and quicker response times.
Significantly reduced their legal spend.
With faster deal execution and lower spend, they extended runway and improved cash flow. If you’re looking to optimize legal costs and extend runway, click here to schedule a call. Let’s discuss whether on-demand General Counsel is right for your startup.