It's Tuesday, so let's whip through AI hysteria, Martha Lane Fox, marketing, distribution, Google, accelerator success, David Bowie, back to school and The Apprentice
FirstFeature.one is a practical newsletter created to help founders quickly reach their first paying customer by validating a killer value proposition and one differentiating feature.
The worst thing about media pronouncements on AI these days is that you’re never too sure if you’re listening to a sage offering profound advice, or the village idiot. Should we stop the roundabout and get off, or keep whizzing around, like sausage meat in a blender? It’s hard to know what to do.
The pronouncements on artificial intelligence are reaching that frothy mouth stage, from AI will take every white-collar job in 18 months, to “the world is in peril.”
The view that we are in peril carried a little more conviction recently because it was articulated by the former head of Anthropic’s Safeguards Research team. As he hurriedly left through the door marked exit, he said: “AI has a potential for manipulating users in ways we don’t have the tools to understand, let alone prevent.”
Well said - although not sure if he knows something we don’t, or is just leaving with a good soundbite!
Fox
One person who does know what they are talking about is founder Martha Lane Fox.
This is what she said on her recent Substack:
“Whenever someone says, ‘AI is changing everything,’ people’s eyes glaze over — and they’re right to let them. Most commentary is either breathless or moralising. Neither helps. It’s all either: ‘It’s the end of work!’ or ‘It’s just autocomplete!’ — and both miss the real question: what has become cheap, fast, and widely available that wasn’t before?
“You only really notice the shift when you give these systems a job you’d normally hand to a competent colleague. Not party tricks, not poems — real work with consequences. The change isn’t that the machines have become mystical; it’s that they’ve crossed the threshold of usefulness. They can now hold context long enough to complete messy, multi-step work — coherent, continuous, close enough to done.
“I tested that in a small way. In thirty minutes with my iPad, I went from “I want an app that does seating plans for parties” to a working version — guest names stored, tables generated, usable interface. I am not a developer. The AI did the building. I did the thinking and the deciding.
“My main lesson? The price of initiative is collapsing.”
Marketing
Along the same lines as above, here’s a thought, we all need to become marketers.
I saw this note from a fellow Substacker commenting on a post on X.
The post said: “The highest-paying job in tech will soon be marketing.”
The Substacker responded with: “Can someone forward this to every CEO who’s ever cut the marketing budget first?”
Firstly, we’ve all known CEOs will heavily prune the marketing when things get tight. It’s often the worst thing to do, because when the chips are down, arguably you need more marketing, not less. But the bean counters have never been able to resist the figures in the marketing column of the spreadsheet.
It’s a kneejerk reaction, something has to go, so let it be those weirdos in marketing. I can say that by the way, because I am a weirdo in marketing.
But there’s a bigger point here which echoes the Martha Lane Fox view. If we can all build products in minutes, what are the next hurdles to jump? It has to be marketing and distribution. That is how you build a base of customers who are happy to buy your product.
In terms of features and products, the forest is forever getting thicker and what your customer has to be able to do is see the woods for the trees.
The game has changed.
Distribution, distribution, distribution
In a similar vein, did you manage to read the very honest tale of our co-founder coming out on the wrong side of his first start-up?
Here’s one of Dan’s best insights: “Looking back now, I regret that we did almost no marketing. There were numerous channels we could have tapped, but we just sent out a few press releases and a small number of YouTube videos. However, we had no owned audience, no email list and no systematic partnerships or paid acquisition...When the features stopped, our growth stopped. And the sad fact was we didn’t control distribution, we just borrowed it.”
If you missed his piece, take a look now.
Talking of Dan, he shared this image on our WhatsApp, which kind of says it all.
Pin this on your wall and look at it day and night, because it hammers home the very essence of what we’re talking about.
Google, come on guys!
Possibly the most ironic AI story last week came from Google, who had the bare-faced cheek to complain that people are copying its AI without its permission!
You don’t say?
The LLMs have happily gorged on all our work to coin in the millions, so it’s a bit rich to start complaining now about work being nicked. Copyright must be the most abused word of the 21st century. That’s all gone out of the window.
Get over it Google.
Normal service will resume one day, but not for a bit!
Okay, rant over.
Accelerated
We keep an eye on interesting start-ups and noticed this one because it’s a company fresh out of a well-known accelerator programme.
Taxnova is a London-based fintech which has just raised $1m following completion of a16z speedrun accelerator run by Andreessen Horowitz.
The start-up simplifies the process of claiming research and development (R&D) tax credits. Backers include a16z, s16vc, Karaoke Club and angels.
Ground control to major start-up
Defence, security and resilience (DSR) is proving the hot ticket in town.
According to the latest intelligence from Dealroom and the NATO Innovation Fund, VC funding in European DSR reached an all-time high of $8.7 billion in 2025, up 55 per cent from the previous year.
While the overall VC market grew by only 16 per cent, the DSR sector has nearly quadrupled in size over the last five years.
The engine room of this growth is AI, which underpinned 44 per cent of all DSR funding in 2025.
Read here on how venture capital is flowing into a sector once considered off-limits for many.
Also, hot on the heels of defence tech is coming space tech, hence my mashed Bowie quote: Ground Control to Major Tom Start-up. The second line of the song also seems apt for us founders:
“Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.”
Space tech is booming though and the global space economy hit a record $613 billion in 2024, up 7.8 per cent year-over-year, with the commercial sector driving 78 per cent of growth.
Projections indicate it could surpass $1 trillion by 2032, fuelled by satellite communications and earth observation. Alternative estimates value the space technology market at $466 billion in 2024, growing to $770 billion by 2030 at a 9.3 per cent CAGR.
BTW, I did meet David Bowie once, which is one of my few claims to fame. I had a client who was in computer games and I had travelled with them to a major expo in Los Angeles. The client liked to put on a good party and I joined a small group of people having a chat in an upstairs VIP lounge. There was a gentle hum of conversation and it took me a while to cotton on, but I recognised that voice. Ah, it’s Bowie. He seemed a decent, normal bloke, talking about the client’s plans for the future. Happy days.
Back to school
Our co-founder Nigel is an adjunct professor at SKEMA’s Business School and this week he’s back teaching “Prototyping and Building MVP” within the Innovation Masters course. Think Indiana Jones minus the hat and whip.
SKEMA is a French business school with campuses across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. It was established in 2009 through the merger of Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Lille and CERAM Business School in Sophia Antipolis.
It boasts some 10,000 students, studying for undergraduate and post graduate courses across its many campuses, including at UC Berkeley.
Nigel will be putting a group of students through their paces.
The Apprentice
The muppets are now in the familiar pattern of weekly cock-ups and subsequent Sugar rollockings.
Apprentice Dan (not our Dan) was spared the evil eye this week because he won as project manager of team chicken. Had he lost, he would have been for the Sugar coated skewer. Dan looks like a McKinsey consultant and has that imperious air about him. He was considerate of his fellow team members, always a big mistake on this programme which portrays nice as weakness, or dithering.
He looks too smooth around the edges to suit barrow-boy Sugar. My Lord prefers market-trader types who pronounce south as saaf and like visiting Margate.
Mind you, seeing the boys in the kitchen trying to convert grams to kilograms, with one apprentice admitting he had a maths degree, doesn’t say good things for the UK education system.
Sugar couldn’t resist saying how chicken-suited Harry’s nuggets were showing, but it wasn’t a vintage joke. Nowadays Sugar looks bored delivering the punchlines - maybe after a dozen takes it doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Personally I would have fired Kieran, not Tan. But then again I’m not a Lord, so what do I know?
Up Next
On Thursday it’s my turn to confess.
I was involved in a robotics start-up which, looking back, made some basic mistakes and I’ll explain what happened, from my view of things. This I’m sure will differ from the CEO’s view of what went wrong, so I have to be a little careful about what I say. But, for me, it certainly taught me some lessons about start-ups.
See you Thursday.
All the best, Neil Martin (neil@firstfeature.one)
Don’t forget to reach out if you have any ideas, or thoughts for us, any insights, or maybe you’d be happy to flag how you intend to create your start-up, or how you’re scaling your existing business. We’re happy to hear from you and to include your insights/opinions/stories.
First Feature founders:
Nigel Verdon is a company builder. For the last 30 years he has built companies that have brought various fintech ideas to life. He has founded and exited three companies: Evolution (1996), Currency Cloud (2007) and Railsr (Railsbank - 2016).
Dan Bruce co-founded Albert in 2014. It was acquired in 2019 by Banco Santander. A software engineer and company builder, he has worked on numerous pioneering projects and has mentored many in the industry.
Neil Martin is a communications and media adviser, and runs his own advisory business. He was previously Head of PR and Content at Railsr (Railsbank) from 2017 to 2022.