Riding the Wave

In 1995 I sat down at a computer in high school and launched Netscape Navigator for the very first time. A gray background popped up, full of flashing text and underlines everywhere. It was clunky, messy, and absolutely mesmerizing. It felt like staring down a rabbit hole with no end in sight.

Before that, my online world was confined to AOL and local BBS’s. But this was different. It wasn’t someone else’s walled garden or glossy vision of “the future.” It was the future, raw and right there in HTML.

In 2022, I had that same feeling all over again when I tried ChatGPT. Up until then, chatbots were a recipe for ridicule. One or two canned replies, and then silence. But this time was different. It wasn’t faking intelligence, it was giving a reasoned reply. It was like peeking into the future again, only now the rabbit hole talked back.

Working with Silicon Valley startups is our day job. Venture-backed startups have made up 90% of our business for the past five years. We’ve heard the AI hype cycles. We’ve even pushed our clients to get AI on their roadmaps. But in late 2022 something shifted. This wasn’t hype anymore. It was happening, for real.

And now? Everyone has predictions about AI. We’ve got a few of our own. But one thing we know for certain: the wave is coming.

Back in ’95, I was just a sophomore playing trumpet in the marching band, using the internet mostly to download fonts and pirated music. If I could talk to that kid now, I’d say: don’t take this moment for granted. Learn to ride the wave.

I’ve seen what happens to people who ride it, and what happens to those who don’t. At the agencies I worked for after college, I watched some folks embrace technology and carve out new careers with titles like Flash Designer or Digital Art Director. Roles nobody had heard of before. They surfed. Others clung to pencils and tracing paper until the water finally closed over their heads.

This time, I’m not treading water. I’m listening to my future self saying, “Don’t take this for granted.” And I’m not doing it alone. My co-founder and partner in crime, Charlie Hinojosa, who glared at those same monitors with me in high school went off to Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. He’s ridden waves before, and he’s never lost the thrill.

So here we are. Thirty years later. And we’re not holding back.

At Sightbox, that means diving in. We’re building AI-powered creative workflows to make branding faster and more consistent. We’re using Generative AI to produce and iterate on more ideas than ever before. We’re applying our Promise Market Fit framework to help startups align their brand with an AI-driven world. We’re also expanding our startup accelerator into our office space, taking advantage of the AI startups growing right around us. And through it all, we’re experimenting alongside founders, showing them how to integrate AI into their growth strategies in ways that deliver obvious advantages to their clients.

Social media was too showy. Web3 was too wacky. But AI? This feels right. Gray background and all.