Hector Serrano (@hectorserrranoo) runs what may be the most innovative paid growth program in Silicon Valley. He joined @WisprFlow at 19, days after quitting D1 soccer. After making every ad himself for 1.5 years, he took the playbook the best e-com brands have used for years and made it work for B2B SaaS: creators make the ads, get paid a cut of the ad spend, and the best of them earn $100K+ a year. Over the past year, Wispr Flow grew revenue 30x+ and recently raised at a $2B valuation. Hector shares his full playbook. We cover: 01:17 What Hector does at Wispr Flow 03:10 The number-one growth lever 04:25 When to start investing in paid ads 08:27 The paid-UGC strategy and how it developed 13:44 How creator compensation works: percent of ad spend vs. GMV 20:07 The profile of a great modern marketing hire 25:03 The importance of young talent 28:22 Hector’s journey from D1 soccer to Wispr Flow 31:03 Step-by-step: How to build a paid-UGC group from zero 43:03 Reaching out to creators 45:37 Building culture inside your creator group 48:31 The role of the media buyer alongside the creative lead 50:05 Team size and structure 53:44 Why UGC works even in technical and enterprise SaaS 56:15 Advice for people embarking on the creator path 59:50 Common mistakes to avoid 01:02:21 The sports approach to hiring 01:03:52 Why the best marketers are allergic to AI output 01:08:07 Founder-led content 01:16:01 Why YouTube packaging matters more than production quality 01:20:06 Lightning round and final thoughts Also available on YouTube: piped.video/watch?v=KzS5Qs7v…

Own your intelligence. Anyone that opposes this has something to sell you (perhaps your own intelligence back to you.) Local models need to continue proliferating. The “absolute unit” massive models may be out of reach for now locally, so your best option is to, indeed, keep your options open. Own your harness, data, connections, runtime: your agents. Embrace open source.

What it actually costs to run an AI creator, from our own build:

Socioeconomic status was key indicator of voting in Israel's elections. Among Jewish voters, in the lowest socio-economic cluster, Netanyahu's coalition won North Korean levels of support. In the top cluster, 81% voted for the Change Bloc. via @YediotAhronot

The best entrepreneur of the next decade is out there somewhere raising at a sub-$10m valuation and struggling to get it, building in a category investors aren't thinking about. That's just how it works.

Could Intelegence become money? As in store of value, mean of exchange, unit of account money🤔

[ ZOOMER ] A16Z TO DROP CRYPTO FROM ITS FLAGSHIP BLOCKCHAIN FUND'S NAME, FOCUS ON OTHER INVESTMENTS, ITS FIRST FOUNDING MEMBER TO ALSO LEAVE: THE INFORMATION

Batel Blaish sultanik “I'm writing to you from the jet bridge in New York, a moment before they ask us to switch to airplane mode. Next to me stands a guy with a croissant-shaped neck pillow, and they just announced that our flight to Tel Aviv is running a little late. Turns out he's on his way to the polls too. The pillow is for the flight, the jet lag is for democracy. I left behind four little kids and a partner on crutches, who walked me to the front door this morning. I'm flying eleven hours just to walk into an elementary school classroom, stand behind a slightly crooked cardboard screen, and slip a small ballot into an envelope. I'm here thanks to AID Coalition’s Fly&Vote initiative, and the crazy part is that I'm really not alone in this. Tens of thousands of Israelis around the world are packing their carry-ons right now and crossing oceans. We could easily have said, "We're far away, let someone else worry about it." But the truth is, this is our home, and we have a say in its future too. 36J. I'm seated, we're taxiing, and the plane is full of Israelis on their way to the polls. To my right, Dotan from Atlanta. A row behind me, Adar from Austin. Ravit from Miami is in Economy Plus. And to my left, Mori, 70, from Hod Hasharon, who's still debating whether to go vote at all. So from my cramped seat, I'm asking you, with all the love in the world: if we're willing to fly halfway around the world to vote, won't you make the five-minute walk to the polling station? The short trip down the stairs of your building? I know, Election Day is a day off. There's the beach, there's the barbecue, and there's that couch in the living room, with the dip that knows the exact shape of your back. But the couch will wait. The beach will wait too. The polls are open for just one day. And it truly doesn't matter who you vote for. Right, left, center, everyone has their own truth. What matters is that you don't give up your right to make a difference, because whoever stays on the couch is simply letting others decide for them. Yours, your mom's, the upstairs neighbor's: every vote counts. Democracy goes on all year long, but it starts right there, behind the screen. On Election Day, have your coffee, grab your ID and the people you love, and go vote. And think of us, standing in line with you, jet-lagged (plus one guy with a croissant pillow). See you at the polls! P.S. By the time the flight attendants cleared the dinner trays, Mori had already promised she’d go vote.

🚨 SOMETHING VERY STRANGE IS HAPPENING TO THE INTERNET RIGHT NOW. An AI discovers a catastrophic vulnerability buried in the infrastructure powering roughly 70% of the world’s websites. A vulnerability that apparently survived for more than a decade. Suddenly, the NSA issues an extraordinary warning. Governments across Europe begin taking websites offline. Japan’s Prime Minister sounds the alarm. OpenAI, Google and some of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies coordinate an emergency response. All because AI supposedly discovered something nobody could exploit at scale before? Now here’s where things get interesting. What if intelligence agencies already knew about these vulnerabilities? What if classified systems had been quietly exploiting weaknesses that commercial AI is only now beginning to uncover? Think about that. If publicly available AI can uncover vulnerabilities of this magnitude today, what capabilities have existed behind closed doors for the last decade? And here’s an even more uncomfortable possibility. What if this crisis becomes the perfect justification for an entirely new internet architecture? Mandatory AI surveillance, government-controlled cybersecurity infrastructure, centralized digital identity and emergency powers to disconnect entire networks. The Deep State wouldn’t even need to manufacture a cyberattack. A genuine vulnerability and the public’s fear of exploitation could accomplish far more. Perhaps the real story isn’t that AI discovered a hole in the internet. Perhaps it’s that AI has started exposing holes that certain people would have preferred remained undiscovered. And the most terrifying question of all? WHO HAD THE KEYS BEFORE AI FOUND THE DOOR?