2010s Social App Foundors Pivot to AI
ryanbed · x · 2026-07-14
Tech watcher @pitdesi noticed an interesting talent flow trend: many founders who dedicated themselves to "social discovery" startups in the 2010s have now become core figures in the AI industry.
- @tblom: Previously worked at Grouper (organizing friend meetups) with Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown, and is now taking a leave from YC to join Anthropic's compute team.
- @ScottWu46: Co-founder of Lunchclub (offline matching for professionals), now founded Cognition (the creators of Devin).
- @alexandrwang: Before founding Scale AI, developed a nightclub app similar to Classpass.
- @sama: Early founder of location-based social network Loopt, now CEO of OpenAI.
The author jokes that a large batch of the most ambitious tech talent in the 2010s was briefly assigned to solve people's drinking, dating, and lunch arrangements.
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