Deedy

This 67 page AI report on how 300 execs at software startups like Cursor, ElevenLabs, Sierra (revenue $10m-$1b+) use AI just dropped.

I read it all so you don't have to. Top 7 takeaways:

OpenAI is still the #1 model provider in the enterprise, but Claude is second.

1/10 

On AI spend.

Companies are spending more on data storage, processing and AI infra than inference and training (quite surprising to me)! Of course, AI talent is by far the most expensive line item.

2/10 

The most popular tools used to develop AI.

This is not a market map.

3/10 

On AI spend by product stage.

Scaling companies at ~$500M median revenue spend ~$100M/yr across training, inference, data storage and processing.

4/10 

The year of agents.

A whopping ~90% of high growth startups are either actively deploying or experimenting with agents.

5/10 

On pricing model.

There's a drift away from subscription based pricing. I love this quote:
"Subscription model is not working for us. Power users tend to use a lot resulting in -ve margins considering LLM API costs, while users who aren't using are at risk of churn."

6/10 

On AI for internal productivity.

Coding assistance [Cursor, Claude] is by far #1 with 33% of the total code being written by AI for high-growth startups.

7/10 

Read the full report from Iconiq here: https://www.iconiqcapital.com/growth/reports/2025-state-of-ai

Was an honor to host Jensen Huang, the Founder &amp; CEO of Nvidia, at MenloVC.

"When I announced DGX, no one cared. No orders. I was devastated. Then this one guy at a little non-profit said he was interested..

His name was Elon Musk and he was at.. OpenAI.

The rest is history." 

Here are some of the lessons I'll remember:

"If it’s a stupid idea, I’ll say it’s a stupid idea.

Not because I want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but because I don’t want the other 30 people in the room to think it’s a good idea. By being silent, they assume I'm condoning it."

"I'm in the service business.

Everything I do is in service of either my colleagues or the mission of my company. It's actually not very different as a busboy at Denny's (fastfood restaurant) and as the CEO of a trillion dollar company."

"I don't do 1 on 1s to avoid people using the 'this is what Jensen said' to get their way. That destroys culture.

I believe in radical transparency and reasoning about why were taking a decision in public. No one has any ambiguity about what and why."

"I don't love my job. I love my company.

Some days, this job sucks. It's long hours, hard conversations. But I do because I love my company and I am in service to it."

He had 5 book recommendations:
1. anything by Clay Christensen
2. Positioning (1981) by Al Reis and Jack Trout
3. Chip War (2022) by Chris Miller
4. Destined for War (2017) by Graham Allison
5. The Art of War (500 BC) by Sun Tzu

"Anyone who has conviction on their spreadsheet is insane.

Someone subtracted 13% from mine yesterday in one go. I don't look at P&amp;Ls. I know they're wrong, but my intuition of the company's future is spot on."

"I love paying taxes.

I've always paid full taxes in the US and I know companies who pay maybe a 2% effective tax.

Maybe with all the taxes they’ll finally fix the 101 (highway). There’s places a whole sedan can fall in."

"To the CEOs in the room, I wish you all pain and suffering.

It's a hard job."

Soham Parekh is just the tip of the iceberg, just like this Redditor pulling $800k a yr working 5 jobs.

r/overemployed is a ~500k community where people just maniacally discuss this.

There are 1000s of Soham Parekhs we don't know about. 

The “overemployed” playbook is well known:  

-hardware mouse jigglers
-remote-only jobs
-AI everything
-camera off / async culture
-week 1 PTO
-"focus work" on calendar
-keep LinkedIn obscure
-outsource busywork
-do the work quickly, deliver it slowly
-"nothing from my end"

To be clear, this is a complete non-issue if your employment contract is okay with it.

It's only an issue when you lie about it, falsify your resume and mislead. That's fraud.