Are AI startups still building products? Or just vibes?

New Episode: Ryan Henry on YC Spring 2025, Agents & Vibe Coding

Once again, I sat down with Ryan Henry of Sand Hill North, the sole VC at a family office to get his hot takes on the cutting edge startups he invests in. Why focus on the YCX25 batch for a show about building tech companies differently? Well, one is he does invest in the latest companies out of YC, and I'm fascinated by what shiny new AI tech shows up. And two, as a non-traditional investor, he doesn't have to deploy capital. He can do whatever makes sense for the fund whenever it makes sense.

So why check it out? This one gets into the weird tension of where we are right now: in between building tools and building coworkers. We cover:

• What “vibe coding” actually is (and why Ryan thinks I got it wrong)
• The early signals of agentic workflows taking over creative tasks
• What a good founder looks like in the age of AI
• Which traditional startup structures are breaking - and when those patterns don’t work, especially in enterprise or high-stakes domains

Check out the full episode - does this match what you're seeing and hearing?👇🏻

Web Summit Vancouver 2025

After Vegas, New Orleans, and Toronto, Web Summit's newest North American destination is now Vancouver. I do enjoy these conferences and this one was no exception. It was significantly smaller than the previous iterations (15k people vs 40k), but Vancouver is a smaller city and there were no shortage of things going on. Aside from hosting an event, I moderated a panel on Canada's innovation opportunity within the Vancity Innovation house (a side event that hoped to increase BC's impact in tech writ large), and even recorded a pod with the founder of the Startup Genome project.

For its freshman year, it was a good start. It certainly had a BC vibe and clearly rallied their tech ecosystem. The Web Summit team have clearly built a well oiled machine as well. What I'm looking forward to at future iterations - and I know this is tricky - is a more "global" feel. Yes there were countries and companies from around the world, but - and maybe it's just that I wasn't invited to the cool kids parties and stages - it felt Canadian. It's a global conference's North American edition, and I think it still has to grow back into that global stature. I know this is hard work and doesn't happen quickly, but IMHO that should be their north star for 2026 - feel more centre of the universe.

I'll be going back, excited to see the next iteration, and hope to see you there too.

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