Bit 1:  Community Still Matters

Despite all this tech, the real highlight? Humans connecting. Rob Franklin’s 15th meetup reinforced why the “Silicon Valley AI Think Tank” isn’t just a name—it’s a mindset.

• Breakouts exercises let attendees share their "AI magic moments"

• Serendipitous meetings often lead to business breakthroughs

• Every AI journey is a human story first

ACTION BYTE: Don’t skip the pizza. Your next partner might be holding a slice.

Bit 2: AI Evals The Secret Weapon for AI Startup Success

Darius Amrani, CEO of Scorecard, delivered a masterclass in why evaluations ("evals") are essential to shipping quality AI products. Forget the old fail-fast mantra—what you want is to learn fast. Evals simulate real user feedback before deploying changes, reducing iteration cycles from weeks to seconds.

• Evals are simulations of future feedback, not just retrospective reports

• They close the loop between customer experience and product iteration

• The best AI teams are defined by how fast they learn, not just ship

ACTION BYTE: Start treating evals like core product infrastructure.

Bit 3: Feedback Is Your Moat

Real-world eval examples from Waymo illuminated this further: it's not just the model that matters—it’s the database of edge cases, collisions, and learnings. Think of your feedback history as intellectual capital. You can always swap out models; your feedback loop is proprietary.

• Waymo simulates thousands of real driving scenarios to validate AI behavior

• Feedback aggregation outlives any individual model

• Evals let you stress-test ideas with speed and precision

ACTION BYTE: Start building your eval library now—before you need it.

Quote of the Week

Bit 4. So good I had to share this quote twice! Hear and see me discuss below.

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Bit 5: AI Model Training: Building Your Core Intellectual Property - The Rise of Micro-Models

John Canalakis, ex-Netflix/Roku and founder of AI Factory, made a compelling case for scrappy AI. Large models get headlines, but tiny models built for specific tasks are the real enterprise edge.

• Micromodels are faster, cheaper, and highly customizable

• Future software development is less about writing code, more about teaching models

• If your startup just wraps OpenAI, you’re not defensible

ACTION BYTE: Start prototyping task-specific models now. Own your IP.

Bit 6: Evals vs. Observability: Converging or Diverging?

One audience question prompted a sharp take: evals and observability aren’t rivals—they’re complements. Observability shows what happened; evals simulate what might happen. Together, they can drive automatic, AI-guided improvement.

• Use observability logs as seeds for eval cases

• Feedback loops should run pre- and post-deployment

• Real-time systems need both to stay safe

ACTION BYTE: Link your observability to a structured eval pipeline.

Bit 7: Sunday Funnies

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Bit 8:  You Can Build an App in 2 Days. But Can You Learn in Real Time?

Apps are cheap, fast, and often no-code now. That’s not the moat. The moat is how fast you learn — both before and after launch. The companies that design for continuous validation and real-time insight won’t just stay out of trouble — they’ll win the market.

• The faster you learn, the safer you scale

• Drift and misuse demand rapid-response systems

• Iteration speed outlasts deployment speed

ACTION BYTE: Audit your AI lifecycle: Where’s the slowest learning step?

This Week's Byte: Thinking Like an AI First Leader

🧠 This Week’s Byte: Why Learning Beats Launching

Pizza gets cold. Models drift. But one thing stuck with every founder, engineer, and exec at our June AI Think Tank Meetup: the companies that learn fastest win.

This week’s issue is your backstage pass to the conversations shaping the next generation of enterprise AI—from evals as product infrastructure to micro-models as your startup’s secret weapon. We’ve distilled the most powerful insights, frameworks, and action bytes from a sold-out night that brought human connection and AI strategy under one roof.

Whether you were in the room or catching up now, this edition delivers what matters most: speed of insight. Because shipping fast is good—but learning in real time? That’s how you lead.

🎥 Members: Enjoy — event video, shorts, and slides.
🍕 But no, seriously, the pizza’s gone. Should’ve moved faster.Until next time, take it one bit at a time!

Rob

YouTube | SV AI Think Tank Meetup | LinkedIn | Your Free AI PRD | SVAITT

P.S. Thank you for scrolling all the way to the end! 🔥 This is the AI training opportunity of the year—and it’s 100% free. While most RAG or AI courses run $2–3K, our subscribers get access to a 5-part live Zoom series taught by the sharpest minds in Retrieval-Augmented Generation, evals, and modern AI architecture—completely free. You’ll learn directly from top engineers at Microsoft, Answer.AI, Johns Hopkins, and more. This is one of the many privileges of being an AI Quick Bytes subscriber: premium content, elite access, zero cost. Sign up, show up, and level up.

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