The founder of Stormy AI attracted the attention of YC's CEO by creating and sharing viral demos of local language models on Twitter. Instead of a cold application, his public building and social media presence led directly to an invitation to apply, highlighting a powerful, non-traditional path into top accelerators.
The founder of Stormy AI focuses on building a company that benefits from, rather than competes with, improving foundation models. He avoids over-optimizing for current model limitations, ensuring his business becomes stronger, not obsolete, with every new release like GPT-5. This strategy is key to building a durable AI company.
The long-term strategy for influencer marketing platform Stormy AI is not just to automate outreach to humans, but to create and deploy its own stable of AI-generated influencers. The founder believes AI UGC will become the norm, allowing brands to spin up armies of custom, AI-driven personas to create content at scale.
The founder of Stormy AI argues large influencers are in trouble because social algorithms no longer guarantee reach based on follower count. Viral potential is now decoupled from follower count, meaning a nano-influencer can achieve massive views. This makes them a more cost-effective and potent marketing channel for brands than established stars.
The Stormy AI founder advocates for prioritizing a founder's internal "hunch" over direct customer feedback for breakthrough ideas. He argues that while customer interviews are good for incremental improvements, building a truly massive company requires a unique, non-obvious secret or vision that data alone cannot provide. This conviction fuels persistence through tough times.
The founder realized his influencer marketing AI could be fully autonomous when he accidentally left it running without limits. The AI agent negotiated a deal, requested payment info, and agreed to a call on its own. This "bug" demonstrated a level of capability he hadn't intentionally designed, proving the product's end-to-end potential.
The founder of Stormy AI pivoted from a context-aware AI to influencer marketing late in his YC batch. He realized his initial concept, while cool, didn't solve a burning customer problem. He then deferred and re-entered YC with a much stronger product, demonstrating the value of radical change even late in an accelerator program.