Dr. Niklas: Venture Grade logoDr. Niklas: Venture Grade
DN #15May 5, 2026 · 43 min · 30 min read
DN #15: The AI Launch Playbook - Build Communities, Not Just Products (w/ Tim Haldorsson) cover

DN #15: The AI Launch Playbook - Build Communities, Not Just Products (w/ Tim Haldorsson)

With Tim Haldorsson · hosted by Dr. Niklas

"You're not competing against AI, but you're competing against other people with AI."
In this episode of DN, Niklas sits down with AI and Web3 founder Tim Haldorsson, who runs a 30-person growth studio out of Lisbon, Portugal.

Tim breaks down the massive shift happening across the digital service industry, where solo operators armed with specialized AI agents are effectively replacing traditional 5-person marketing departments. He explains his exact framework for building hyper-personalized AI tools in Claude—including how he uploaded a database of 32,000 of his personal X posts and a library of 700 agency press releases to flawlessly clone his writing style. Niklas and Tim also discuss the vital importance of IRL (in real life) community building, citing how billion-dollar companies like Cursor and Anthropic are leveraging local cafe meetups to build impenetrable moats.

In this episode:
The 1-Person Marketing Department: How a single strategist managing a PR agent, a social media agent, and a content agent can outcompete a legacy team of 5.
Cloning Your Brain in Claude: Tim’s exact method of feeding 32,000 historical tweets and 700 press releases into Claude to create the ultimate custom writing skill.
AI vs. Human Journalists: The shocking blind study by the New York Times where 80,000 readers rated AI-generated articles higher than human-written pieces.
The Offline AI Movement: Why massive AI labs are suddenly borrowing Web3's playbook and investing heavily in IRL community events and hackathons.
The Widening "AI Gap": Why consulting giants like McKinsey and ultra-adapted small teams will completely crush legacy service businesses that refuse to adopt AI.
Product vs. Distribution: Why early-stage founders should actually prioritize building an audience and a community before stressing over their product roadmap.
Lisbon's Tech Renaissance: Why 300 days of sun and a massive influx of international builders have turned Lisbon into Europe's ultimate hub for AI and Web3.

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#DN #ArtificialIntelligence #Marketing #AIAgents #Claude #TimHaldorsson #Web3 #CommunityBuilding #Startups #Lisbon

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro: Niklas meets AI & Web3 founder Tim Haldorsson
1:44 From solo freelancer to running a 30-person international agency
3:32 What the AI industry is actively borrowing from Web3 marketing
7:58 Cafe Cursor & Anthropic: Why billion-dollar tech labs are pushing IRL meetups
11:43 The Founder's Dilemma: Should you focus on product or community first?
17:46 The NYT Study: Why 80,000 readers preferred AI writing over human journalists
18:53 Using 32,000 old tweets to perfectly clone your writing style in Claude
23:52 The AI Gap: Why consulting giants will crush smaller legacy agencies
28:40 The divide between the "AI-pilled" tech hub and the rest of the world
32:44 How one person + four AI agents can replace a full marketing department
34:53 Automating competitive research & building an AI skill with 700 press releases
37:45 Advice for solo founders: Free GitHub agent repositories vs. hiring an agency
40:36 Why Lisbon has explicitly become the ultimate European hub for AI builders

Transcript57 turns

Niklas:Hi, and you too, welcome to you, my lovely listeners. So glad you're here. Today, you're joining me for a chat with Tim. Tim is a founder focused on AI and web3. Hi, Tim, lovely to have you.

Tim Haldorsson:Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to a great chat.

Niklas:I love people that build things and I'm always interested how people ended up being founder. How did that journey go for you?

Tim Haldorsson:And so I moved to Portugal eight years ago and at the beginning I was actually working for Google here. They have like their marketing support in Portugal. And then what happened was I was starting freelancing on the side. So that was about eight years ago. then, yeah, and then after some time then the freelancing kind of grew and grew and I got more clients on the freelancing side. ⁓ And at the end of it, it kind of turned into two jobs. I was like freelance freelancer and then I was working full-time at the other job and then I was like It's maybe it's time now to to to test the role of like launching in a company And then quite quickly it took off. got in one person, then I got in another person and then kind of like scaled it. And then over the last seven years, which has been a wild journey in ⁓ both initially in the crypto space and then lately now in the AI space on just building great teams that execute and how to grow and boost around different companies. So I think maybe that's like started off as a freelancer consultant and then grew it into a... into first an agency and now a studio in the AI space.

Niklas:Very interesting. And how did growth go? You probably said you started as a freelancer. How many people are you today?

Tim Haldorsson:So today we're 30, about 30 people working full time. We have an office in Lisbon with around 15 people working from the Lisbon office. And then we have a small office in South Africa and then a few people across Europe that we are working with.

Niklas:Interesting. And I think you're focused very strongly on the digital space. Which topics drew you in and what do you find interesting?

Tim Haldorsson:And so initially like I've always been like a tech I love tech like all different types of tech and and initially like I got into crypto a bit before that almost almost nine Yeah, like 2017 I got into like the crypto the fintech space And I've always been like the person that like I was by like different gadgets and I'm always into everything tech and want to test it and explore it So then afterwards it kind of like quite naturally was like those were the types of companies I like to work with and help with their growth campaigns PR And everything so kind of net tech kind of like was the perfect fit for for what I like to do myself and what? Yeah, what I like to

Niklas:And I think you did a lot of marketing, especially in the Web3 space early and now for other spaces. And maybe you could say what is really different ⁓ and what is very helpful? What can be adapted from that time that you spent in that space?

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah, so when it comes to marketing and growth, it comes down to, especially in the web3 space or AI space, of course it's always like software or digital products. So everything comes down to like the same, let's say storytelling or the same... the same digital way of doing marketing. One thing that we've been doing, especially over the last couple of years, has been ⁓ focused around like IRL events. We host a lot of after works, both in the web tree space, but also in the... in the AI space. So a lot of it is very similar and a lot of it is like slightly unique in the AI space because then it's more like you have like a software, like a SAS product or more subscriptions while crypto is more speculative and a little bit more in that direction.

Niklas:Yeah, that is quite interesting. I think sadly the crypto space has gotten a really bad name these days, but it started very, I on very solid, strong ideas. A lot of the later things have not gone really well. What I think is also now becoming more important and has, I think we can learn a lot there from what happened in web3 or how it was done in web3 is community building. creating a creating a community around your ZAS product. ⁓ How important do you think that is and how would something like that be approached and what can we learn?

Tim Haldorsson:You can see like that the AI space has kind of taken over X or former Twitter and you can see like a lot of the similar community building and the community style has been kind of like what made the biggest AI labs grow very very fast. because you can see like that a lot of it aligns around like ⁓ in the crypto space it aligned around like being investors in something but in the AI space it more aligns around being the user of certain models, certain tools, certain agents. ⁓ But it all comes down to the same thing, which is like, can you get people to be part of like ⁓ a community, a group, which is the most powerful, powerful marketing. ⁓ I think one thing that stands out, especially in the AI space, what we see is like, doing things in the real world is something I personally am a big fan of, like, because it adds like... more depth into the community. let's say like this, you like in different events across the world, they have some big AI events in Paris, then you can have like a community event where you can kind of like bring, let's say a hundred people from your community together in a venue, you have like an after work or something. So I think that is something that has become even more important as everything in AI is just happening on X and so quickly so I think that that's a way to to really stand out.

Niklas:I also think this is ⁓ really an interesting phenomenon. I've been in machine learning before it became LLMs and before GPT 3.5 and 4. there's always been a small group of researchers who were very active on X, were exchanging on technical topics. very actively and discussing all these things. And this has just become really, really big. So this is, I think, just the evolution of a subculture into mainstream. But what I also find, and that's very interesting, I've lately gotten an invite to a cafe, Cursor, for example. So Cursor has locals in different cities hosting meetups. And I find that very interesting because this is something I would have... of situated in the web3 space and now the big AI companies are borrowing this community building. What's your take on this and how is it also in Lisbon regarding this?

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah, so Cafe Cursor, they actually have one coming up here in Lisbon soon as well. So we have hosted quite a lot of events at our office in Lisbon. we have like after work, we have one coming up with Claude as well. And then we have had a few in the past with different AI tools or AI labs. So I definitely see that as like one part, because usually when you have an IRL event or something like that, maybe you have a hundred people coming in person, but then you probably have like a hundred thousand people seeing the same content online. So it's like you do something in person, but then the ripple effect or the waves across like X or across LinkedIn, across socials, it's like a hundred X or even a thousand X more exposure from it. So it's definitely something you see the big AI labs doubling down on. Anthropic are going all in on their ambassadors and then we have some other ones of the big labs that are also doubling down on different types of community events and meetups and kind of taking that approach.

Niklas:It's also interesting that you say you do a lot at your company. How did you start that and why did you start hosting? What was the main driver behind it? Is it more customer driven so that the customer asked you to do it? Is it for customer acquisition? What's the focus behind it?

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah, so initially it was just... Earlier, so when you run an agency, then right now in the world, you can see how quickly everything with AI is moving. And you see on X, like everybody talking about like the future agency will be one person with a hundred agents out there. And internally, I was like, ⁓ my God, this is moving so quickly. I want our team and everybody to like master it. So initially we just started with like on the Thursdays after work, we had like internal our team. I was like, Okay, so this Thursday everybody in Lisbon, need to come to our office. We are going to host a builder evening. So we started like two and then we do it till seven. So initially it was just our own team that we're building for like a couple of hours after work and it was so fun. So then we started to invite some partners to it. We don't really have any customers that comes out of it. So it does more being just we want to see who the coolest builders are. And then we invite other builders in Lisbon and then it kind of grew and grew. And now we have...

Niklas:you you

Tim Haldorsson:Our latest ones we have like maybe a hundred people coming to our office and then we have a few hundred people that apply so we can just curate them and see like we just want to have the best builders coming to our events. So it's quite interesting to see and then we want to see, we often do like demos so people can come and let's say five people do five minutes demos each diving into their workflows or to their like how they structured their agents or how they built it or how they customized it.

Niklas:you you

Tim Haldorsson:So we had quite a few of them and then we asked them to submit before so that they can come like with really good demos ⁓ and it has been like I've learned a lot from them. So it was mostly like that part we want to learn and build with fellow AI builders here in Lisbon.

Niklas:That sounds really awesome. And if you now were talking to like an early stage founder who says, I want I community is really something I need around my product. How would somebody start? What's the first steps to do?

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah, I think one thing like I've been thinking a lot about like in the the air world if you're if you're a founder what comes first and what comes what you should prioritize first like because there's different schools of thought here and Should you go all in on product first or should you go all in on community first? When do you need to go in what direction? I think right now when it's so easy to build a product, a key thing is to focus on building distribution and a community first. And then you have that as like an audience that you can co-build your product together with your community, kind of. Like you have a few testers that can help you to give early on feedback. So I think early on the key is to focus on community first and like you have a product idea and then focus on community. It could be like X spaces where you have like different events there. You can host local like to get together like in your city if you're in a big city in Europe or even a small city you put up an event on meetup.com or on Luma and then you just say hey AI after work with builders you will instantly get like 20-30 builders in your city to come together and then you can just like brainstorm and pitch some ideas to to them. So the key would be to find like a good way to find 20-30 builders that you want to have like in a part of your product journey and focus on giving value to them and getting them involved and then afterwards you can focus on like product roadmap because it also shifts so quickly right nowadays it's quite like how quickly like a product roadmap can can shift

Niklas:Yeah, I think it's a really interesting take, right? then it's really, and you kind of answered it already. First, you can also just ⁓ join a meetup probably and talk to people. But I think like starting out building a community or growing an audience or something, it's not easy. ⁓ It's a journey, it takes time. ⁓ And I'm just thinking loudly. wonder if, I mean, these days it's really easy to launch something. So maybe you can just launch something, talk about it, see if it resonates and use it to build a community. You could also try to produce some content, launch a newsletter, just share something, try to build thought leadership in a certain space. What do you think? You could also just organize a meetup, as you said, but what...

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah.

Niklas:What do you think is easiest to do? And what has the most value long-term, if you look at the different options?

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah. So I remember when I started off early on, I pitched, I was writing a lot of thought leadership for leading publications and I had like some ideas early on and then I was just sent it in as like a guest post or like a guest article. That's a quite powerful way to build up a brand. If I would start from the beginning, a few super easy things, it's like almost all the biggest AI labs got their own certifications. You can have like Anthropic, OpenAI, all of them have like their own courses that you can do online where you then get like certified saying that you're a Claude code certified builder or something like so. I would start like if you want to build in AI. go into all of the biggest AI labs and take their courses. I think that's a very good way to start. They have free academies that takes a few hours to just do them so that you get some ideas of understanding what's happening. Then afterwards, send in some guest posts to good publications. There you can focus on more open-ended questions like here is where AI is heading or more like... more things that are taught leadership or building up that part. Then you start posting them on X and on LinkedIn probably. ⁓ Join local meetups in your city and start networking with them and see like, hey, can I take you out for a coffee or something? and then kind of like start building that part and then over time like the most valuable things will be your personal brand because that's also what's standing out ⁓ in the age of AI because it's so easy to create and you see so much content all over the place and then what stands out is like who wrote that content or like who's the person behind it.

Niklas:Yeah, I think this is also interesting, right? I think two years ago, three years ago now, ⁓ it was clear that you would have written it, or maybe Ghostwriter. ⁓ These days, it's very different, because we have all these autonomous agents, or LLAMPs, that can produce content at a very high quality, would say. From a writing style, would say that LLMs are at least as good as I am. I wrote a PhD a few years ago. I would consider myself somebody who spent a lot of time getting into writing. And I can say that... ⁓ the quality of the finally formulated text. For example, if I gave an LLM bullet points and I had me write a text and the LLM write the text, I would not be better. So this is really interesting, but the truth is they are just really good at writing text and it's super hard to beat it.

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah. Yeah. You even saw ⁓ New York Times did a study I think it was they had they did with 80 a little bit more than 80,000 readers on their website They showed them two articles. So one was an AI article There was a written and that one was an a human written article and then they did a blind test with 80,000 people on their platform and the majority preferred the AI ⁓ content the AI article got a higher rating than human written content and I was with 80 plus 80,000 people on New York Times so it's getting quite very very good like easy things like if you have written a lot in the past and I think that this is like on X if you're on X or on LinkedIn you can build a skill on Claude with every single post that you have done in the past and then you can have that like as a brainstorming partner like so for example I have done on X I think I've done

Niklas:Okay. you

Tim Haldorsson:32,000 posts by hand. don't write with AI. And then afterwards I downloaded the whole history of 32,000 posts that I've done. And then I uploaded it as a skill on Claude. And then you can kind of like get your writing style to be your brainstorming partner where you kind of like brainstorm together with it. So it's super powerful and how if you have the right skills or you have written a lot in the past that it gets so much more like ⁓ concise and align with your your style so quickly

Niklas:And as I said, especially for longer, I think X is also special in the sense that you write very short text. So it's a lot more about intuition. People don't really care that much about spelling mistakes. But perfection of wording is not as important, I would say, as elsewhere. So like, You can be very scrappy and it will not hurt your, your treated or that's very different if you write a long form article of any sort. Like the moment you step out of, of the short form content, getting from having the content that goes into something to having a final long document is a very painful. process for human, would say, at least it is for me. It's not fun. And it's incredibly easy to get it at high quality for an LLM. So I wouldn't vote to not use LLMs for that because I just think it's so much better to be honest, following from content. ⁓ As long as you have the ideas in your mind and you want it written out, probably these days you're better off. How is it with video? What's your experience? How fast is video? progressing in that space.

Tim Haldorsson:So I think 11labs is the leaders. They built some really cool tools. There are many different ones out there. I've been testing a few of them. ⁓ especially for some like animations which is because I remember I I Tried to do those like when I think it was three years ago when first those like when you could clone your face or you could clone like different things I remember I tried that out quite early and Now I tested it quite recently and it's almost identical to a person It's incredible how those cloning tools that have been working with humans for creating ads or for creating animations. It's quite incredible what it can do. I think almost everybody in the design are using AI in different parts.

Niklas:you

Tim Haldorsson:⁓ Either if you like I don't think we're there where AI has like the full taste of a human but AI can still do like what like the junior intern would do and all of the like the preparation and then you do the final edits of it to add the human touch to it and the human taste to it. So I think it can replace a lot of like junior and a lot of like the entry work like the but I think you still like need to edit it as a human to make to give it a taste and the things but you see on X like almost every day different new labs and studios are publishing incredible ads and videos that are all AI generated. is like, you're like, this would have costed like millions, two years to create this one with a Hollywood style production studio, two million to create the video. And now we see a few prompts in an agent.

Niklas:And it seems to be, I've been thinking about this a lot lately and currently I feel a lot like these LLMs are AI engineers just in very large amplifier. Like people who were very good before ⁓ can just be 10x more productive. They will still be very critical, as you said, with taste and look a lot for quality and try to get really good results. ⁓ And I think that the gap just gets a lot larger between average or people who are not so much into it, maybe then they don't use it as much. ⁓ And like the people who are really outstanding already, for them, it's just a significant amplifier. So I feel the gap just gets larger. It's like you multiply everybody by a factor of 10, but like the worst people obviously still don't reach the level of

Tim Haldorsson:You know... Yeah... Yeah...

Niklas:of the best beforehand, even with that and the best people are the most that are able to use it the most just can amplify themselves so much. What's your thought on that?

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah. So I actually back in 2023, so when when ChatGDP first came out I went all in on it and we actually launched like an academy that was focused on like marketing with ChatGDP back then. But back then we were too early. and it wasn't ready for prime time, the AI content, it still came across as like slop and it was a little bit too early. And then I think I had late last year, beginning of this year, was like, hallelujah. It was some moment, like I saw something and I was like, this is 10 times as good as any, what a human would have done. And... Over the last year, I've had like so many all hands internally within our team, which is like every single person needs to be AI native and AI first, because otherwise we are going to be outcompeted by another team that are all AI native and AI first. And it kind of becomes like that. Like if you... You're not competing against AI, but you're competing against other people with AI. if you, and then on a personal level, I feel like it's, it's the, it's the wave that you can't afford to miss as a founder or as as a leader in a company, because if you miss it, then you're kind of are almost permanently going to be behind. because the gap is just getting wider and wider and it's going to turn into probably like a bit more of a winner takes a larger share of the pie, which is a scary thought, but it's also the best creators and the best writer can create so much more. So it will be like a higher standard of like of all creations and all ads and all. campaigns as well. But it's a scary thing and you don't want to be on the beach sitting and waiting out this wave. You want to be in the middle of the wave or being in the front of the wave and kind of getting there because otherwise it's a scary thought to be left behind in the air wave.

Niklas:Yeah, and I think especially in the professional service space, it's clear that this amplification is also true for companies. If you look at, for example, in consulting, I was in consulting a few years ago. And if I look at it, it's very clear that the really large consultancy firms, they were a bit heavy on this and they have the money to build the internal tooling to leverage this 100%. Like if you're McKinsey or BCG or somebody like that, you will build internal tooling, you will amplify or get rid of the juniors. And ⁓ you will take larger market shares because smaller companies just cannot compete with your internal tooling. And you will basically get a lot better, while the other ones will fight to be in that space at all. And then you have something I've seen it on X lately. was, I think, Andrei Kapati posted about it. Large scale difference seems to be that the people who are very good already, they are now using cloud code and they are completely AI built. And there a lot of people who aren't really. They've used GPT 3.5 on OpenAI in the free tier, but it was okay-ish. And they didn't get the same effect that these people like me or you get that use these tools every day who use the latest models.

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah.

Niklas:And who are in the front and there the gap just gets larger. And I think that's not only true on a personal level. I think that's also true on a business level. Like the people that are AI-pilled and that are pushing the topic do the same in the companies that they are at. And the other ones are falling behind. And I think this will, as you said, I think that we'll need, especially in the professional service sector to a trend of more consolidation because smaller Smaller companies will get outcompeted more. And if you want to stay in front, you have to be all in on it. You need to use the latest tools and stay in front, I think. And then you have an opportunity at hand. But if you don't do it sitting at the beach, I would bet ⁓ you will get bought by one of the bigger ones probably at one point in time. But you will not be able to make it on your own. That's my thought if you are not.

Tim Haldorsson:you ⁓ I know a lot of people that are a little bit... Some people if you're anti-AI. A lot of people are like... You saw some studies when they were doing polling on the... AI favorability and it had turned like so much negative like so the majority of all people were very very negative to AI and then you go to X or you go to yeah X here and then everybody's super happy about AI that like the influencers and the creators and the founders that are all talking with each other because for them it's like a So it seems like it's creating like almost like two different worlds one that is like the AI AI pill and AI fur world and then there's like the rest of the world that is a little bit unsure of what's going to happen with AI but being in service in service businesses that's why we went all in on like building AI systems for marketing and business development teams where you can basically you can get so much more out of talented people that are. working with AI's because then it's like one person has like five interns or five assistants that works around the clock. And if you work in Claw, you can set up recurring tasks that brief you every morning. You can connect it with all other data sources and you can kind of build it into like you can see like the ⁓ Jarvis in Ironman, like where you have like you're connected to everything and you can get all the data instantly like competitive research. You can get this, you can get that and you can like when when a person really is a native and fully has embraced it and it's it's so powerful what you what you can do because you become like an almost like an one-man army if you've done right and when you have like the experience and skills to to to tread carefully with it but but now you can also see like It's scary times with like the latest AM models. And I saw over the last days when the US government called in all of the big banks and warned about like the impact of the latest AM models and that it's going to like shake up the... It's also a little bit scary when with the leading models from the top companies.

Niklas:Yeah, it's always hard to say, I mean... I don't know how good they really are. I know they want to go public this year, so they have to create types. until the models are out, I'm always at least a little bit skeptical on what they have. If they had AGI, they wouldn't have to go public because they obviously could just print money. They would find a way.

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah.

Niklas:Why would they want to go public? That's always the point. So they don't have that yet. And the question is how good are the models really that they have compared to what we have today? think for us normal people, it doesn't really matter because the models are good enough to do a lot of stuff. And that's also a question I would be very interested in. If you look at the work you are doing, how much of this work can AI agents already support that run autonomously and where's the gap? Like where does the human step in again or what is the human part and what can be taken over by models?

Tim Haldorsson:So it's very different from role to role. But how I would view it and what we see the trends are going is, so previously let's say on, if you're a marketing team. Or if you work with like an agency, then you have, let's say, one PR manager, one social media manager, one content creator manager, and maybe you have one head of marketing. So you have four people or maybe five people to have a full stack marketing team. Now you can do almost that with one like Swiss army knife marketeer plus four agents. one PR agent, one social media agent, one agent in all directions. And then let's say you're, so you take four people into one and you can produce almost the same or if not better results because you have like the, with it.

Niklas:you

Tim Haldorsson:Of course, that's where we are heading and where we almost are today on the AI side there because one person can achieve so much more in those areas. I think the key parts where we are not with agents is of course relationships, which is core of any service business is you and me sitting here going out for like... Stakes for a dinner with the other team in Lisbon for example we do lots of dinners with clients and so on of course those human touch points or the meetings that's kind of where Eja cannot compete or Eja cannot like Eja can enhance it a little bit by like having a voice like a recording of the meetings and so on and then you can plug that into the rest of the systems. But a lot of the human parts, like the relationship building in those parts, you can't really do. But when it comes to most of the content, outreach, connections, strategy, then you can add a brainstorming partner with the AI, and that we already see today. You can also... Like a lot of things that previously took too much time to do manually, you can have an agent doing. So for example, setting up. Let's say you run a company and you want to have like here are 10 of our competitors. Can you monitor if they launch some new campaigns or if they launch some new PR, if they do some interviews, if they attend some events? You could do that before as well, but it would take like one person to spend lots of time diving into it. But now you can just have like a competitor research agent that's, let's say, briefs you every Friday with like a a few PDFs around like what all of your competitors doing and your market is doing. So it's a combination of the two like AI allows you to do a lot of things that previously took too much time but adds a lot of value and then on top of that like you can achieve much more with less basically when with good custom. Customized agents that is built on a track record like for example if if we have written by hand over the last Six seven years as an agency 700 press releases By hand if we feed 700 press releases into a skill in Claude then it can be very good because we have like a 600 track Track record and then they can do a lot of it for example So it's like a mix of the two. You can do new things that previously was, that are very valuable. Every Friday you get a brief on 10 competitors. Perfect. You would never do that before because it's too costly or it's too this or that, but now you can do it. Then there are other things where you can achieve much more with less. So like one person become like a 10X marketeer or a 5X marketeer. I would put it in, but then the human part is like dinners and I think those become even more important, like being in person, having events together, catching up across the world. So I would put it in those categories.

Niklas:Yeah, I think this is really interesting. And I also believe, especially in the service business, the human-human relationship is extremely important when you get the project. So in the say it's funnel and also in the delivery of the project, obviously. So in the finalization. What do you think, if I were a small startup in the last space, how far can I get with AI agents right now? If I work alone as a founder, when should I start reaching out to an agency? Where's the value?

Tim Haldorsson:⁓ So when it goes to solo founders then It depends like are you coming out of college and this is your first business then it's a quite big different thing compared to if you have worked for a Let's say consulting company or a VC firm and have like a understanding of business So it really depends like if you're an like an early person coming into it. I usually like to say that you have to learn it first before you should hire somebody to do it. So you need to understand marketing first on at least a surface level so that you can of understand what you need before you hire anybody else to do it. because otherwise you don't know if it's working, you don't learn from it and I think you should review working with an agency or a ⁓ partner as a learning experience as well if you're ⁓ just starting off. So I think early on, think if you're just starting off, like I think the best, there's multiple agencies out there that have uploaded their whole skill libraries to. GitHub for free. We have put out tons and tons of resources ourselves as well. Just for if you on our website, almost all other marketing agencies and consulting firms and like our studio, we have so much free content online where you can just a PDF where you can dive into learning everything step by step. And on GitHub, you can see tons and tons of ⁓ of AI studios that have published their whole directories with all of their internal skills on github for free. ⁓ So I will probably start in that direction to just get things going. So find some good libraries and download those skills and just kick it off yourself and see where it goes at the beginning.

Niklas:I also believe a lot in learning by doing in the beginning and then bringing in other people when you have at least done it once. Like having done the zero to one once, I think is a lot of value. I think maybe to finish with Lisbon, it's one of the most active hubs and still evolving, I think a lot. And you have hosted, I think, crypto AI conference and multiple other events.

Tim Haldorsson:Yeah.

Niklas:Lisbon, what do you think is special about this city and as an emerging space still?

Tim Haldorsson:I come from Gothenburg in Sweden and I remember looking at this. In Sweden there is 300 cloudy days a year and then there's like 50 sunny days. Lisbon is the other way around so it's 300 sunny days in Lisbon and 50 rainy days. So it's like... Lisbon sits at the center of Europe in some way because it's very easy to fly all across Europe, all across the world. It's great weather, good startups, a lot of founders are here. think what drew me here early on was that, it's good vibes, it's a beautiful city, good food, good restaurants, easy to get to the airport, relatively affordable, it has been going up over the last couple of years, but it's still relatively affordable for being a big European city. And when we, so we hosted an event a year and a half ago that was like AI focused. had 1,400 people coming to the event. And then I think last year we hosted like 20 events in 15 or 20, something like that in Lisbon with a mix of like builder days, hackathons and different types of workshops and afterwards. And there's so many cool people here from the US, from lots of germ, from Germany. from Spain, from UK, from Sweden, from all across the world. Lisbon is a great point at the center of it all. And so many tech people, tech founders that are inspiring and that are building.

Niklas:Yeah, sounds lovely. And I think those are very nice closing words. Maybe if somebody wants to join one of your events, where do they find you? Where can they sign up?

Tim Haldorsson:And you can find it on Luma. So Luma, Espresso AI, or follow me on X, I post a lot about it as well.

Niklas:Yeah, that's awesome, Tim. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast and my lovely listeners. you next time.

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