I never expected the number of emails, texts, and calls I got from the last Operating Partner letter. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can read it here. It shared the life lessons I wrote to my son when he left for his freshman year of university, translated for CEOs, executives, and the OP community. Thank you.
I’m in New York City the next few days for a series of meetings and some moments of NYC Watch Week. My buddy Jason and I built a NYC Watch Week master calendar that’s gotten some pickup in the watch community. Hopefully it helps if you’re planning to attend any of the events.
Two launches I’m particularly excited about:
H. Moser & Cie. Off-Grid Blue, which should be waiting for me when I get back from New York.
Christopher Ward Classic Loco, which already has a GPHG nomination and launches Thursday evening in NYC. I can’t remember the last time I was excited about a CW watch, but I’ll be at the launch.
I’ve also gotten a bunch of emails asking about my AI setup. I’ll probably go deeper on my process in a future OP, but it’s pretty simple. I work in Claude Desktop or ChatGPT/Codex desktop (historically, it was mostly Visual Studio Code). I build there, publish to Vercel and GitHub, use Neon databases, and connect to a handful of apps like Resend. Nothing fancy, but it’s what I use. I haven’t played with Dots or Muse yet. I suspect that changes in the coming weeks.
A big reason I haven’t tried the newer launches is that I’ve been heads down preparing for my annual Growth Leaders Summit, which took place last week in Silicon Alley (Manhattan). I wrote about it below. It was a powerful experience, orchestrated to show the magic of AI. A huge thank you to everyone who came and made it fantastic.
Be well, do good.
Darren
Why Does Show + Tell Stop in Fourth Grade?
What happened when two dozen portfolio CMOs spent 36 hours building alongside forward deployed engineers
Why does show + tell stop in fourth grade? And why do hackathons only happen in tech?
Our most formative years are probably zero to ten or so (I’m not a scientist, so don’t quote me). Back then, show + tell was how we expanded our thinking. You shared your hobby, brought in the pet ferret, or demonstrated your super duper peanut butter and jelly technique.
Then hard school happens. Then university. Then jobs. The moments to share as a group get rare, small, and hard to find.
The last formative era I lived through was the birth of the web. I spent it in show + tells and buildathons all over Silicon Alley. There was no YouTube or TikTok to learn from. Those rooms are what expanded my mind.
That shaped how we run our Growth Leaders community. For about ten years, we’ve created safe spaces every six to eight weeks for marketing leaders to learn from a wide range of companies. Once a year we immerse ourselves for 48 hours. We just did it, and it was incredible.
Year three of an AI agenda
Three years ago we started an AI agenda with our marketers. Very few playbooks existed, but Bain, BCG, and McKinsey were all calling marketing one of the three areas of a business that AI would change most. Rather than fight a bunch of smart people, I owned it and started a multi-year change agenda to help our companies adapt and grow faster.
Our annual survey says it’s working. Since 2024:
Respondents reporting moderate or deeper AI adoption went from 36% to 87%
Those spending more than 5% of their growth and tech budget on AI went from 18% to 53%
62% say campaigns launch measurably faster than a year ago
The number that stuck with me was a different one. 64% are piloting or running AI agents. Only 3% have them in production.
That gap is why this year was a build.
The Build
AI is still in its formative years, so we went to the heart of Silicon Alley and immersed ourselves in builder culture. The event was called The Build, hosted at InstaLILY’s NYC HQ.
The format is the part worth stealing. Every CMO was paired 1:1 with a Forward Deployed Engineer. Ahead of time, each CMO picked a marketing app from a menu and sent over the context and data. Nobody built for 36 hours straight. CMOs built for a stretch, then went into presentations, fireside chats, and peer conversations with partners including FundamentalCo, Bain & Co, Accenture, Adobe, Evertune, AARU, and Salesforce. While the CMOs were in sessions, their FDEs kept building.
It ended, naturally, with a show + tell: two dozen CMOs, a crowd of InstaLILY FDEs, and several key partners. What got built in 36 hours was truly impressive. A few examples:
Heather (Zelis) built an influence index that pulls many sources together to show how influential her brand is.
Crystal (US LBM) built an agent that reviews her brands’ websites and makes ongoing SEO and AEO recommendations. It builds against those recommendations too. Add one more MCP connection and it could publish.
Jason (Evident Scientific) built a competitive intelligence tool covering market share by market and competitive momentum, using public data plus some of their 1P data. He also won the room with a spinning globe that pulls data in.
Steve and Stephen (Bob’s Discount Furniture) built a platform that shows the impact of brand awareness on spend, ties in competitive analysis, and suggests “money moves” to optimize media and marketing.
Michael (Fogo de Chão) built a category review platform that assesses competitors, their offers, and their weight and influence in the market.
That’s a handful. There was much more.
What I wanted them to leave with
I wanted every CMO to see the magic of AI and then put their hands on it. Not every CMO is the best builder in the world (though apparently we have a few). That was never the point. The point was to leave enlightened by what’s here and keep pushing their AI agenda in ways they hadn’t considered.
For fellow operating partners: the gap between piloting and production won’t close with more decks. Pair your leaders with engineers, give them real data and a deadline, and make them show their work.
Thank you to InstaLILY, our partners, and every CMO who showed up and built.
