Tangent is looking for people with ideas that address real markets using existing technology, which are informed by the existence of AI, and which set out to become rapidly self-sustaining.
Solutions to real problems for existing markets using existing technologies
When we evaluate applications, we start by asking: Is this an idea that solves a real problem for an existing market, using technology that already works?
We’re largely uninterested in hypothetical enormous markets that have to be created at great expense, and deep technology that has to be invented under conditions of great uncertainty. Those kinds of ideas are what venture capital was designed to fund.
Instead we're looking for people with ideas that show knowledge of context: understanding a specific problem, the specific people who have the problem, and how to solve that problem in ways that visibly and immediately work. This applies as much to social enterprises and not-for-profits as to for-profit businesses. Our starting point is always a real problem, a real population of people with that problem, and existing technology to use in addressing it.
… that are informed by AI
Then we ask: How does this idea take AI into account? The contextually aware ideas that interest us most are shaped by what AI now makes possible.
There are at least four ways AI can shape the idea:
Type 1: Build [AI Things] — the products are models or hardware used to train models.
Type 2: Build [Things That Use AI] — the products use AI to operate.
Type 3: Use AI to build [Non-AI Things] — AI was used to build the products but the products operate without AI.
Type 4: Build [Things Necessary/Important Because of AI] — the products exist or have become important because AI is in the world.
Type 3 is our primary focus, specifically narrowly scoped software. The cost of building software has been falling for years, but has experienced an especially sharp decline with AI-enabled code generation. It’s now possible to write narrowly scoped software much more quickly and cheaply than before. Which opens up a large, mostly unaddressed opportunity: building context-aware boring tiny software tools for individuals and SMEs for whom building bespoke software was previously not economically viable.
(But we’re also interested in Type 2 and Type 4 ideas.)
… that set out to be self-sustaining as soon as possible
Finally, the most important question we ask is: Does it make a plausible case that it can become self-sustaining early?
Whether intended to be a for-profit business, social enterprise, or not-for-profit, the idea needs a credible path to the resources that will let it keep going. These might come from customers who pay for a product, or from a government contract to provide a service, a grant to build a usable prototype, or philanthropic funding paying on behalf of a product’s actual users.
The specific mechanism matters less than evidence of some thinking about a mechanism for being self-sustaining. We're looking for people who can tell us what choices they’ll make (about who to go after first, how to price or pitch, what to build now and what to defer) and why those choices are the right ones for their idea.
During your time with Tangent, we’ll work with you to clarify and test your thinking as fast as possible.
If this sounds like what you’d like to build, we look forward to meeting you soon.