Cracking AI Growth & Retention: How Instant & Relume scaled from $0 to $10m
Eight-figure revenue in competitive markets. Products that double revenue in a single month. Customers who tattoo your logo on their body. Not growth hacks. Not hype. Real traction, earned the hard way.
Brendan Hill sits down with Daniel James Slater from Relume, Liam Millward from Instant, and Sally Yu from King River Capital to unpack what actually drives breakout AI companies in 2025. The answer isn't more features. It's distribution. Speed to value. And teams that move faster than their competitors think is possible.
They talk churn, hiring A-players, finding PMF the hard way, and why most AI products fail not because the tech is bad, but because the company moves too slowly.
This one's for anyone building or betting on AI right now.
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In The Blink of AI🦾
This month, Georgie went deep on what AI actually costs, not in dollars, but in culture, trust, and the people it leaves behind.
Liam Millward unpacked how Instant is building an AI-powered marketing manager for e-commerce, why retention is the real growth lever, and why AI agents may soon become the majority of internet traffic. Then Tracey Spicer brought the sharpest reality check of the month, algorithmic bias isn't shrinking in the generative AI era, it's compounding, and "move fast without guardrails" is a blueprint for harm, not just disruption.
Rada Stanic took us inside the hard part of enterprise AI, past the hype and into AIOps, security boundaries, observability, and why data quality still makes or breaks everything. And Holly Rankin asked the question nobody in Big Tech wants to answer: if AI was trained on humanity's creative work without permission or payment, what do we actually owe the people who made it?
Four conversations. One thread: the builders and thinkers who refuse to let the speed of AI become an excuse to skip the hard questions.

What It Takes to Build a $100M AI Company at 17

The Bias Built Into AI, And Why It Should Scare You

The Five Things Enterprises Get Wrong About AI (& How to Fix Them)

Sam Garven on Building Safer Workplaces with Hello Canopy

The Music Industry's Billion-Dollar AI Problem
Connect with Georgie on LinkedIn or Instagram to share your thoughts and suggestions for future guests.
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Pick My Brain 🧠
This month on Pick My Brain, Alan Jones tackled the two questions founders dread most, how do you stand out in a crowded category, and how do you pitch the same product to completely different audiences?
James Horan brought Phinly to the table, an AI-powered personal finance assistant helping consumers automate savings, cut fees, and take back control of their money. The product is sharp. But Alan's sharpest feedback wasn't about traction or TAM. It was about memorability. In a room full of AI fintech startups, logic and numbers aren't enough. Make investors go home and say "did you know that…?", and make sure that sentence starts with something only you taught them.

How to Pitch Growth to Investors and Revenue to Publishers
Michelle Chen pitched Mental Jam, turning real lived experiences of depression and anxiety into cozy, story-driven mobile games, and facing the rare challenge of pitching to both investors and game publishers at the same time. Alan's answer: you don't use one deck, you use three. A teaser, a live pitch deck, and a detailed leave-behind. They also got into stage nerves, slide density, and why the first 15 seconds of a pitch decides everything.
Two very different startups. One lesson: clarity and memorability beat comprehensiveness every time.
Ask a question, get advice from Alan, or give feedback - https://www.speakpipe.com/pickmybrain
Pick My Brain is supported by our wonderful sponsor Galah Cyber

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🔒 Secured
From AI agents rewriting the rules of penetration testing to the quiet ways artificial intelligence is breaking trust in hiring, this month's episodes unpack where automation helps and where it can cause real damage.
Brendan Dolan-Gavitt from XBOW breaks down what autonomous pen testing can reliably do today, why AI overclaiming serious findings is a real problem, and where human judgment is still the only thing standing between you and a false sense of security. Then Kim Acosta, former Amazon talent acquisition leader, unpacks how AI is changing recruitment, why candidates using it to shortcut applications are hurting themselves more than helping, and why trust is still the signal that matters most.
If you want a clearer view of where AI actually belongs in security and hiring decisions, you are Secured. 🔐

How AI Pen Testing Actually Works (and Where It Breaks)

AI, Hiring, and Trust: Why Shortcuts Break Interviews

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