Issue 001: AI, Deal Flow, and Building in Public

👋 WELCOME TO THE SIGNAL

Issue 001. We're live.

This week: Anthropic just dropped real data on which jobs AI is actually eating — and the answer is more nuanced than the headlines. We've got a Miami sustainability business in our pipeline that's already printing money before their big expansion. And we're pulling back the curtain on the retention battle we're fighting every day building B'Ü.

No fluff. Just signal.

⏱️ THIS WEEK AT A GLANCE

Read time: 5 minutes

Anthropic just published "Labor Market Impacts of AI: A New Measure and Early Evidence" — and unlike most AI jobs research built on theory, this one uses real Claude usage data to measure what's actually being automated right now versus what AI could theoretically do.

AI can theoretically cover most tasks across business, finance, legal, and tech — but actual adoption is still a fraction of what's possible. The gap between capability and reality is still enormous.

Computer programmers top the most-exposed list at 75% task coverage. Sounds alarming. Here's our honest take.

For a while, the fear was real — if anyone can build software with AI, does specialized expertise lose its value? We wrestled with this genuinely. The democratization of knowledge sounds great in theory until you're the one whose knowledge just got democratized. If everyone can do what you do, are you still special? Does your price have to come down?

Maybe partially. But here's where we actually landed.

Coding was always just the typing.

Every specialized role has two layers — the mechanical and the judgment. AI is compressing the mechanical layer fast. But the judgment layer — architecture decisions, deployment, code review, knowing why something breaks at scale, understanding tradeoffs — that doesn't autocomplete. And the more the mechanical layer compresses, the more valuable the judgment layer becomes. The floor drops on generic expertise. The ceiling rises on real depth.

The more interesting development we're watching: more people can build things now — but that doesn't mean they're willing to take initiative or understand the in-betweens. There's a whole layer between writing code and shipping a product that AI isn't close to replacing. Deploying, reviewing, architecting, owning outcomes — that's still deeply human work.

Where we're genuinely uncertain: does deep expertise even matter the same way anymore? We don't have a clean answer. But we believe the people who learn to work with AI at every layer — not just use it for the typing — will command a premium that grows over time, not shrinks.

The real warning sign isn't layoffs — it's that the bottom rung of the career ladder is quietly disappearing. Entry-level hiring has slowed in AI-exposed fields, which means fewer people get the chance to build the deep expertise that makes senior talent irreplaceable.

Times are changing for everyone. The question is whether you're paying attention.

On to the money. 👇

Sustainable infrastructure is quietly becoming one of the more interesting investment categories right now. As ESG mandates tighten and government incentives stack up — carbon credits, green energy tax benefits, state recycling regulations — the tailwinds are real in a way they weren't five years ago.

Defensive cash flows plus regulatory upside. That's a rare combination.

We have a deal in our pipeline that fits this thesis directly — a South Florida-based sustainability and recycling company transforming tire waste into valuable resources. They're operational, revenue-generating, and expanding. What makes this interesting to us isn't just the numbers — it's that they've built a dominant position in a market most investors aren't even looking at yet.

Phase 1 — Current Numbers (before new processing line):

Phase 2 — Post Expansion Projections:

The market:

The opportunity: Projecting $1.1M–$1.6M monthly revenue from clean energy alone.

This is the kind of unsexy business that quietly builds serious wealth. Real revenue, real assets, real market position — in a space getting real capital right now.

We don't share full deal details publicly — but if you're an investor or operator interested in learning more, reach out directly.

📩 [email protected]

Now for something a little closer to home. 👇

Retention is a fight. Every single day you're trying to figure out how to keep people coming back — and we used to think a good product was enough. Sign up, use it, stay. Simple.

Then we started building B'Ü.

Here's the reality we're navigating: people use apps in three distinct ways. There are users who open it once and disappear. Users who open it sparingly — like how I myself only open Strava when I’m going for a run. If I go weeks without working out, I’m not opening Strava. And then the rare user who builds it into their daily life. The goal is always that third group. Getting there is the whole game.

What we're learning is that retention isn't one lever — it's a completely different lever for every type of user.

Some people come back for community — accountability partners, group check-ins, knowing someone else is watching. Some come back for competition — they want to see where they rank, how they stack up, whether they're winning. Some come back purely for internal progress — not against others, just against yesterday's version of themselves. And here's the thing: what works for one group actively doesn't work for another.

We launched a feature around collective impact — the idea that every green day you have creates a ripple effect for others. Together, reaching 1 million green days. Beautiful in theory.

Why? Because our core user is internally driven. They care about what they can control right now — not what other people are doing. The ripple effect concept is a feel-good idea but it wasn't delivering real value for the person most likely to actually stick around. We built the right feature for the wrong person. Lesson learned — and we moved on quickly.

Now we're testing accountability teams — smaller, tighter, more personal. The hypothesis: if your friend knows you skipped today, you're less likely to skip. It taps into something more primal than a leaderboard. Early signal is promising.

The bigger question we're sitting with: do you go after people already wired for self-improvement — higher acquisition cost, faster conversion — or do you try to build the habit in people who aren't there yet? Lower cost, bigger market, but a much longer road to get them to value what you've built.

We tried targeting the highly-aligned user aggressively for a few weeks. Acquisition cost was high — sometimes felt like it didn't make sense. But those users converted from free to paid and they stayed. So was it worth it? We're still doing the math.

The honest answer is we don't have the final answer yet. But we're learning faster than we expected — and that's the whole point of building in public.

If this was useful — forward it to one person who should be reading it. That's how we grow.

Have a deal, a pitch, or a story worth featuring? → [email protected]

See you next week. ✌️

— Team Amplifye