Casey Winters's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Arthur Julio Nelson made a great 2x2 on my last post that was too good not to share

Oklahoma and Missouri share a border. Their mentalities couldn’t be more different. Sooners adopt because they want to be early. Missourians adopt because they want to be right. If you’re building something new, confusing those two audiences will slow you down more than almost anything else. Most founders listen to the wrong customer too early. This post breaks down: • How to tell who you’re talking to • Why crossing the chasm is really a motivation shift • Why every product eventually has to “cross state lines” Every product starts in Oklahoma. The question is when you move to Missouri. Read here: https://lnkd.in/gdVMPcxr

Another interesting question that happened recently on SuperMe, asking about how product tours can help build habit forming moments in a product. Great takes from Ben Williams Erika Warren Daniel Chu Brian Balfour Elena Verna Hila Qu 曲卉 Lauryn Motamedi Shaun Clowes Lenny Rachitsky Read their perspectives here: https://lnkd.in/gF74FAGp

Banger from Dan Hockenmaier: "Rams lived by the axiom “weniger, aber besser” (less, but better). LLMs generate creative work at unprecedented speed, but they don’t know which of it is good. “Slop” translates roughly to “more but worse.”" Read the whole thing here:

I joined Marc Baselga and Ben Erez on the Supra Insider podcast to talk about something I’ve been thinking a lot about: Why AI needs to help us understand how people think, not just give answers. And how SuperMe is helping with that. We covered: ↳ Why meaningful expertise has disappeared from public platforms ↳ How knowledge moved into private networks, and why that’s a loss ↳ The difference between answers and perspective ↳ How SuperMe uses AI to scale access to judgment, not replace humans ↳ Why peer learning and trust matter more than ever in career growth Most real-world problems don’t have a single right answer. What people actually want is to learn how great operators reason and then decide for themselves. If you care about AI, expertise, and the future of professional networks, I think you’ll enjoy this one. Full episode here:  YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g__t9dG8 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gb5K8BpK

Working with my co-founder again on something zero to one surfaced something interesting: We approach early building very differently. Over time I realized the difference wasn’t about speed. It was about surface area and conviction. Early-stage founders make two bets: How much to build. How much to polish. That determines how hard pruning will be later. And if you don’t know what you need to own long term, you won’t know what to cut. I unpacked the framework here: https://lnkd.in/eRJbYDXr

Another interesting new perspective search someone recently did SuperMe: How should marketplaces think about liquidity, should they focus on the specific area they focus on? Guessing they can't be liquid on every category they have products in. Great perspectives from Dan Hockenmaier Mike Williams Sameer Singh Sarah Tavel Lenny Rachitsky Jason Bornstein Mike Duboe Sjoerd Handgraaf Read their perspectives here: https://lnkd.in/gCsqrAWq

We recently released perspective search into the wild at SuperMe. We’ve seen a a lot of interesting searches but this is one that keeps coming up for obvious reasons. Link to actual search here: https://lnkd.in/grvbwDNk

Everyone keeps asking me: Why hasn’t AI produced a new consumer network yet? We’ve seen explosive growth. We’ve seen massive ARR. We’ve seen impressive demos. But we haven’t seen a new Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. Here’s my take: Most consumer AI startups are building magic tricks, not moats. They grow fast because capability improved. But durable networks require three things: • New land (or a structural “why now”) • Patience • Alignment between audience, density, and value Network product/market fit isn’t one variable. It’s a three-body problem. Until AI creates new land, or someone manufactures density without it, most attempts will default to tricks. I wrote a deeper breakdown here: https://lnkd.in/g7WChVPr I have some future posts coming on ways to attack this problem.

Most AI advice assumes you should keep up with everything. You shouldn’t. AI doesn’t actually change every week. What changes every week is the noise. The real question is: where should you sit on the signal to noise curve? Innovators tolerate noise to learn. Early adopters wait for leverage. Most people should ignore most things. The important part: you should sit in different places on the curve depending on the topic. That’s how you keep up without wasting time. Wrote this up with a simple framework + examples:

Today, we’re pulling the curtain back to unveil SuperMe 1.0: the AI-native professional network, launch Perspective Search, and announce that we’ve raised a $6.8M seed round. How SuperMe works: - Ask a question. - SuperMe finds the right professionals. - Their AI profiles answer instantly, grounded in their real work. It’s how advice really works in business. We’ve just built it into the network. Search is changing. But it has gaps. AI assistants answer without revealing the humans behind the knowledge. Perspectives are lost as blue links turn into one-size-fits-all answers. Perspective Search is our answer to that. We show multiple answers to your questions, from people who have solved your problem before. You can also go deeper by engaging with individual profiles. We’re also excited to share that we’ve raised a $6.8M seed round led by Mike Duboe at Greylock, joined by some of the most thoughtful builders and operators in tech (see list below). Read the full story in Alex Konrad’s Upstarts and our full launch post in the comment below. Product Leaders: Aparna Chennapragada, CPO for AI Experiences at Microsoft Nikhyl Singhal, Founder of the Skip and Former VP Product at Meta Archie Abrams, VP Product at Shopify Omar Seyal, Head of Product, AI Search at Instagram Naveen Gavini, former CPO at Pinterest Ran Makavy, former CPO at Lyft Shaun Clowes, CPO at Confluent Eugene Wei, former CPO of Oculus, Hulu Jason Costa, Sr. Director Product at reddit Founders: Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman Brian Balfour, Founder/CEO of Reforge Vanja Josifovski, Founder/CEO of KumoAI, former CTO at Pinterest Cat Lee & Jack Chou, bosses of mine at Pinterest and Founders of Pace Rob Schutz, Co-founder of Ro Pamela Valdes, Founder/CEO of Musa Brandon Terry, Founder/CEO of Village Growth Leaders: Elena Verna, Growth at Lovable Brian Hale, Chief Growth Officer at Doordash Adam Fishman, Growth and Product Advisor Darius Contractor, Chief Growth Officer at Otter Luc Levesque, former Chief Growth Officer at Shopify Daniel Chu, Head of Growth Eng at Coinbase Micah Moreau, SVP Growth at Hims & Hers Sri Batchu, CMO at The RealReal Hila Qu 曲卉, former VP Growth at Gitlab Eusden Shing, former growth at Pinterest Operators: Dan Hockenmaier, CSO at Faire David Luan, Head of AGI SF Lab at Amazon Andreas Lieber, GM at California Forever Morgan Hughes, former CFO Cambly, VP Finance at Airbnb Mckenzie Lock, GM Content Platform at Netflix Ali Behnam and Michael A. Morell, Partners at Riviera Investors: Lenny Rachitsky, Author Lenny's Newsletter / Podcast Harry Stebbings and Kieran Hill, Partners at 20VC Kevin Kwok, Partner at Sutter Hill Mercedes Bent, Co-founder of Premise David G. Cheng, Co-founder at Coreline Ventures Tim Kendall, Co-founder at Common Metal and former President at Pinterest Nikki Farb, Founder of Power of N Nikhil Goel & Amr Al-Shihabi, Partners at Karman Ventures Ivan Kirigin, Founder at Tango VC Mei, Matrix Multiplication