Catching yourself rereading last year’s VC emails while you’re back in Silicon Valley is a pretty good way to realize how wild the last 12 months have been. Colin, Chuck, Canisius, and Todd break down how Collide AI is turning fast POCs into real production workflows, why change management is the actual moat, and how a stacked forward deployed team plus community driven distribution is setting up 2026 to be the year everything scales.
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00:00 Product market fit jokes and kickoff
00:28 VC email flashback and velocity
01:29 Forward deployed model and AI first mindset
02:18 Sam Texas and AI coding shift
04:04 What AI first actually means
06:18 Not just podcast bros anymore
07:00 AI breaks silos across the business
08:21 Doglegs example and incentives
09:57 Change management is the advantage
10:18 Client story and regulatory filings win
12:42 Selling outcomes not hype
13:36 Building the FTE team and faster delivery
16:24 AI strategy as workflow ROI first
18:26 Grok as a thought partner and GPU cluster
20:15 Shale revolution mindset parallel
22:29 Recruiting, software DNA, and stacked team
26:16 Content and community as a recruiting engine
29:11 Distribution flywheel in the real world
30:22 Team distribution vs product debate
32:32 2026 is the scaling year
34:02 Community platform finally clicking
36:09 Building the community platform the hard way
39:20 Scaling clients, POCs, and production
41:09 Why mom and pops matter
41:55 Energy demand tailwinds and macro impact
44:44 One word answer for next year: scale
45:20 POC to production cycle time focus
47:12 Scaling tech, sales, and financing
49:45 Moving at AI speed story
50:14 Raising capital and building serious software
52:56 Collide as the operator layer vision
54:02 Gratitude and community over everything
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