Sami Tas

Your Creative Director is worth 3x your engineers. Just kidding… (kind of). I’ve sat on the floor of Berkeley dorm rooms, watching some of the most brilliant engineers of our generation build products that should have changed everything. YC-backed. VC-funded. Technically insane. And still… they failed. Not because the product wasn’t amazing, but because no one felt anything. We’re entering an era where: → Anyone can build. → Everything looks clean (and people are tired of sterile vibe coded UI) → “Good product” is the baseline. So what actually differentiates you? Emotion. Story. Movement. I come from the film world. Creatives shape the culture we live in. Think about the products you love. They build worlds around them. They make people feel seen. It’s not what your product does, it’s how it makes people feel. That’s how you win. Great Creatives don’t “market” your product. They give it meaning. You can have the best product in the world. But if no one connects to it, it doesn’t matter. So go pay your Creative Director (more). Or hire one. 💋 🎬 And to my friends in film and storytelling: There is a place for you in this next wave of tech. You are not “extra.” You are the difference.

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The coolest thing about building a robot on Viam is all the things you don't have to learn: inverse kinematics, motor control systems, motion planning algorithms. Viam abstracts away that complexity with a simple API call so you can focus on being a good developer. Our mobile team proved this when they built a robot arm controller using just Flutter and ARKit in just a handful of days, and use it to grip colored blocks. This is what we're building toward at Viam: making robotics development more accessible to software engineers. Read how Clint Purser, Julie Krasnick, and Martha R. Johnston built this robot and everything they learned along the way: https://lnkd.in/eSTSru2R.

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Hot take: I don't think MCPs are here to stay. I think AI will be smart enough to use the tools and services we have today (API, SDK, UI) to do anything a human/dev can.

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The hottest role in AI startups right now isn’t Forward Deployed Engineers. It isn't GTM Engineers. It’s Deployment Strategists. Decagon calls it an “Agent Product Manager.” Harvey calls it a “Solutions Architect.” Palantir Technologies has had versions of this role for years. And the salaries are climbing fast: - Decagon: $200k–$285k - Palantir Technologies: $120k–$200k - Figma: $150k–$260k - Ramp: $100k–$180k - Harvey: $190k–$260k So who are these people? They are usually pseudo-technical -- CS or engineering majors, or folks with technical work experience. Many come from 2 years in consulting, IB, or PE, then jump into startups to get their hands dirty. They are young, hungry, polished, and comfortable being in front of customers. What do they actually do? They make sure enterprise AI deployments succeed. A $100k+ deal does not survive on a nice pitch or a self-serve onboarding flow. It survives if the customer sees value in the pilot. That means: - Embedding directly with the customer - Designing prompt logic for specific workflows - Working with engineering to align integrations and data flow - Helping exec teams define their AI roadmap - Running feedback loops into product and GTM Why does this role matter so much? Because enterprise AI is messy. Integrations, data transfer, and adoption make or break a deal. Most buyers are using AI for the first time, and each has unique workflows. Deployment Strategists bridge that gap. They own the outcome. They are accountable for making pilots successful, which often means millions in revenue down the line. At Conversion, Sam Bochner has been leading this work for us. We are now thinking about scaling it into a full team. Because a few successful pilots can fund an entire department, and the cost of failed deployments is too high to ignore. Is this just a rebrand of customer success? Not really. Success is about answering tickets and renewals. Deployment Strategy is about going deep with a few enterprise accounts, extracting maximum value, and ensuring the pilot closes into a multi-year contract. Call it Agent PM, Solutions Architect, or Deployment Strategist. Whatever the title, this is becoming one of the most important roles in AI SaaS.

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