Published: January 6, 2025
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This is @shawmakesmagic - $100k in debt 70 days ago. - Coding till 3am every night to pay rent. - Turns a carzy idea into $2B+ AI project. Here’s how an open source dev rewrote his life in 10 weeks — and is now building AI agents that's eating the world 🧵:

Image in tweet by David Lin
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@shawmakesmagic 1. The Idea (circa Oct 20, 2024) Shaw replies to @truthterminal the original AI agent who blew up on X. He toys with the idea of recreating Marc Andreessen as an AI bot. https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal 2. The Inspiration It all started with a reply to a joke: Random: “Can someone resurrect DegenSpartan with AI?” Shaw: “Yeah, I can do that.” https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal 3. The Beginning Shaw decides to recreate this crypto influencer using his tweets. And thus, @degenspartanai was born. https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai 4. The "Scam" Scare Some random guy (@elijah10T) accuses Shaw of scamming him after losing money on DegenSpartanAI. After chatting for 2hrs on Google meets, Elijah decides Shaw is the real deal and invests 80 SOL (~$16K) into his project.

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T 5. The AI Hedgefund Shaw meets the creator of http://daos.fun for lunch (@baoskee) They dream about a world where AI makes money for us. They come up with Ai16z - like @a16z but with an AI as the investor.

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 6. The Launch Shaw envisions the first AI VC fund, fully managed by Marc AIndreessen (an AI). He goes home and launches the project using an AI image:

Image in tweet by David Lin
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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 7. Overnight Success The project sells out in 25mins. They raise 420.69 SOL (~$88K) This is the market cap now:

Image in tweet by David Lin
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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 8. Instant Karma Shaw didn't get any allocation for himself during the project pre-sale. But Elijah from earlier (@elijah10T) decides to donate some of his shares to him after getting 16% of total allocation (worth ~$320M today). https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 8. Open Sourcing Riding on the momentum of the launch, Shaw decides to release the framework he was silently building for 2 years. He called it Eliza: An open source AI Agent framework.

Image in tweet by David Lin
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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 10. The Challenge Shaw writes that Marc AIndreesen (AI) will become the best VC in history. Real Marc Andreessen sees this and posts about it on X: https://x.com/pmarca/status/18...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 11. Funding Research Shaw uses this new attention to help fund non-profit research. https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z 12. The Rise Over the next 2 months, $ai16z grows from $0 to $2B in market cap.

Image in tweet by David Lin
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13. Conviction Now people claim this is just a hype cycle. But Shaw is convinced that this "meta" is the next big wave in Crypto + AI. Most crypto natives already know all this ofc. But it took a normie like me many hours to catch up on all these tweets. https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z I hope this helped someone understand a fascinating story in this new world. If so, would appreciate a like or repost so I can spend mo time doing more research projects like these :) https://x.com/shawmakesmagic/s...

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@shawmakesmagic @TruthTerminal @degenspartanai @elijah10T @baoskee @a16z Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this, share it with someone and follow @davidlinjiahao for more. I write about AI, startups, and other cool things that interest me :)

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