Sure, you know all about the event. But who will be there? Here is the most up-to-date list of investors who plan to attend.

The full list of startups, enterprise tech, and investors is on the Luma page.

​For this event, we have secured the AWS Builder Loft in SF on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, and this time we will do a startup pitch competition.

If you’re a founder or investor, apply here to attend.

Sponsorship opportunities still available. Reply to this email if interested.

Co-founder and CEO: Brian Golob
Location: Tacoma, Washington
Stage: Seed
Website: EGmetrics.com
Social: LinkedIn

EG Metrics goes after the blind spot most diligence misses. The operational strength of the manager behind the numbers. Their platform provides decision intelligence that turns organizational signals into risk and resilience insights.

They evaluate organizational effectiveness, including culture, controls, and business model, using 200-plus risk indicators and 48 proprietary models, which surface issues before traditional approaches to risk management do.

Most “manager analytics” is still backward-looking. It tells you what happened. EG Metrics is explicitly about catching organizational drift early, before it becomes a headline, a drawdown, or a client exit.

When the shift ends, the Clawbots clock out and slide into Cooldown Club. Frank Ocean, Daniel Caesar, Snoh Aalegra, and Summer Walker are the soft reset, warm vocals that let the bots power down without going silent. Massive Attack, Moby, Air, and Nightmares On Wax keep the after pulse humming late into the night.

There is an old rule in marketing, it’s called the “Pepsi vs. Coke Rule.”

I am old enough to remember the '80s cola wars (I know you’re not, I have the demographic data), where Pepsi repeatedly took shots at Coke. The marketing was funny. But Coke correctly ignored them (for the most part). They never responded to Pepsi’s jabs. Why? Because you only discuss competitors larger than you.

Pepsi mentions Coke. Coke never mentions Pepsi.

The moment you name a smaller competitor, you elevate them. Silence is not arrogance. It is positioning.

OpenAI broke the rule. (Oops.)

Not quietly either. Sam posted a long academic essay on X (ooff). The OpenAI CMO also posted a rambling, off-the-cuff post on X that made a similar point to my meme: OpenAI has a billion users who care what a bunch of PhDs at Anthropic think. They aren’t big enough to run ads. But she starts mentioning Texas and gets lost in the details.

*Note: I can tell from the comments on my post that many are confused about how advertising works as a business. In a nutshell, OpenAI will become a publisher when it releases its ad product. Publishers make money by running ads on as many impressions as possible. Scale is the only thing that matters. Both AI labs also offer a business product with API access for an enterprise. This is a different business entirely and is not what is being compared here. The metrics used to evaluate each business differ significantly. Doing so conflates two distinct things. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

There was a little flurry of explaining, clarifying, and framing. All of it is fully understandable, very human, and, strategically, well, wrong. (Maybe these Madison Avenue ad guys were adding value back in the day after all?)

That is the part people miss about category leadership. It is not a trophy you hold. It is about the pride you take in being the best. The second you look rattled, you signal to customers, partners, the press, and investors that there is something worth rattling you about. You turn a rival into a reference point.

Category leadership is not about defending your position. It is about making your position feel inevitable. The market should not feel like it is choosing. It should feel like it is defaulting.

Most startups are not category leaders. They should act like challengers.

That is why so many people in tech loved the new Anthropic ads. They are funny, clever, well-produced, and articulate the challenger brand's voice. Which is what people in startups love and are intimately familiar with.

They pick fights. They simplify the story by drawing a line and daring the leader to respond. They take controversial and unpopular perspectives to get attention.

Anthropic did exactly what a challenger should do. The ads were designed to be noticed, discussed, and shared by insiders. They worked.

The mistake was not the challenge. The mistake was the response.

When a challenger gets the leader to react, the challenger wins something more valuable than attention. They win relevance. They force symmetry where none should exist.

If you are not the default, you should study challenger playbooks. Pick fights. Force comparisons. Borrow attention. Make the market look at you.

But if you believe you are already the default, your job is different. You do not need to win the moment. You need to preserve the position.

Category leadership is not proven by cleverness or commentary. It is proven by restraint. By repetition. By refusing to turn a settled hierarchy into a public debate.

Competitors want you to say their name.

You shouldn’t think about them at all.

🎙️ 033 Gregory and Paul Show - OMG Saas-pocalypse!

This week's episode is a full-tilt macro-to-micro episode. SaaS stocks get crushed, AI narratives collide with market reality, and we go deep on why this correction makes sense. Then we pivot to what actually feels new: autonomous agents, Clawdbot, Moltbot, Moltbook, OpenClaw, and the first real signs of the emerging AI-native internet.

I'm a former creative director, 3x head of marketing, and founder of Vibe Your SaaS. After 20 years in Silicon Valley, devising new ways to get people to click on things, I now help early-stage B2B SaaS companies scale their businesses through strategic sales and marketing consulting.

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