A Friday lunch in Sydney for CEOs and founders building AI products, the investors who back them, and one M&A lens. The theme: what's actually happening with AI in your world?
On a Friday in late August we held a private lunch in Sydney. Around the table: CEOs and founders building AI products across B2B, deep tech, health, energy and defence-adjacent data; the investors and capital allocators who back them; and one M&A lens from the investment banking side.
The theme was a single question. What's actually happening with AI in your world?
These are highly respected, and highly interesting, senior Operators and Investors whose worlds don't usually interoperate. Put them in one room over a long lunch and let them riff on how AI is landing in their world, and in the worlds one degree removed from theirs. That is why we host these, and it is the only brief the guest list has to meet.
Everyone there carved the time out of an exceptionally busy schedule. Nobody was performative, and everyone was, if anything, over-humble. The conversation went past "here is why we're smarter than everyone else" and into real-world experience: what's Signal, what's Noise, and which of it is genuinely useful.
Was a delicious and sometimes very insightful lunch.
Tony Moriarty, Deckard Technologies, in the comments afterwards.
The founding stories were excellent. Every person was candid about both the Craft and the Serendipity, the luck, that got them to where they are. Founders on why they started. Investors on how the thesis they hold today actually formed, and how they ended up at the firms they're at. Thanks to Daniel Shaddock of Liquid Instruments for kicking us off and setting exactly the right tone.
The most interesting discourse, possibly after a few wines and a Glenfiddich or two, was whether human ingenuity thrives, survives or slowly erodes if the assumption holds that AI compounds into most workflows. For anyone wanting to pull that thread further, Rich Sutton's essay "The Bitter Lesson" is a good place to start.
Thank you to everyone who made the time. I had a great afternoon and hope everyone did too. The full table is on the LinkedIn post.
This was the Sydney leg of the Perpetuate lunch and dinner series. Melbourne followed in September. If you are a founder, CEO or lead investor and would like to be in the room next time, message me on LinkedIn →
Stephen Tung is the founder of Perpetuate and hosts the series.