Over the last few months we've hosted community events in NYC, LA, and our home base in SF.

We've also tapped our international networks and spent time in LATAM and EMEA to become more deeply embedded in AI ecosystems with a great density of research talent like Paris.

As we continue to scale our design x research community, we're excited to support not only founders but builders who are working on the most exciting projects to accelerate AI adoption to creatives, small business owners, and ambitious professionals who are embracing this period of learning new skills and trying new tools.

Worklife's design x research series in collaboration with Contra

Two years ago, Worklife published our first Humanity in the Era of AI survey because we wanted to understand how the general public was feeling about AI when it comes to daily life: the music they listen to, the TV shows they watch, the decisions they make at home. This study catalyzed a new approach for us internally as we recognized that AI has created a desire for human connection and to support creatives in all industries like art, music, film, and live events.

After reading Contra Lab's Human Creativity Benchmark, we decided to collaborate with Contra on a series of events to bring together creatives and researchers.

We sat down with Replit's President and Head of AI Michele Catasta to learn how the company scaled to 100M users, how they leverage agents internally, and hot takes on what it takes to be a successful AI company in a time with a lot of competition and product market fit is now a moving target, not a single milestone. Full convo here.

We had over 600 RSVPs for this event and consistently see this level of interest for all of our events. Our goal is to build a differentiated community where designers, researchers, and builders at top AI companies can come together to meet each other, ask questions, and learn from others in a time where we're building entirely new playbooks for building and scaling a company.

In true Worklife form, we want these events to be upbeat, relaxed, and humble. There's always live music from local artists to make sure we're creating an experience that's memorable and we're supporting local chefs, musicians, and creators in way that honors to our mission.

Our second event with Contra featured the best minds in design for an unfiltered conversation on how design has changed in light of AI slop, design getting easier but designers getting worse, hiring and scaling a design team with the right philosophies and guardrails to set the team up for success, and other hot topics on every designer's mind.

This conversation included: 

Space X AI's John Bai, previously Cursor, Flora's Maxim Leyzerovich, Contra Lab's Allison Nulty. Full convo here.

What I love about the work we’re doing with designers and researchers is the majority do not listen to VC podcasts, they aren’t active on X, and we’ve personally sought them out and found ways to proactively work with them. We’re in close contact with future founders and early builders who are AI-native and contributing to the most important research in Silicon Valley. 

My 10+ year relationships from Zendesk and building SaaS School have been helpful as many of my colleagues and close friends are now execs working on Space X AI, Claude, Codex, Loveable, Replit, and serve as experts for the fireside chats and panels we're hosting with researchers looking for a safe space to ask questions and one that's applicable and not overly academic and infrequent like NeurIPS. 

It's been energizing to build a community from scratch, it's an entirely new network of people with help from old friends.

We’ve grown our mailing list by 3,000 builders at top companies since starting this community and my following on X by 5,000. 

Our fall lineup for speakers and events have all come inbound as companies want to collaborate with the group we've assembled. 

In the next month we’ll be scaling these efforts: 

• An original body of research on mainstream Americans sentiment towards AI in film, TV, art, work, and at home. 
• A collaborative body of research on AI creating more creative jobs, not less. 
• A large scale design x research night in SF (invite-only for builders at top companies) 
• A full day conference in NYC as Runway, Krea, and most AI companies are hosting their more creative events there and top design talent are based there

Worklife Storytellers Collective

Storytelling has been the hottest topic and one of the hardest skills for Silicon Valley, especially AI companies selling to creatives and people outside of the bubble to figure out. 

I brought on one of the most well-connected people in Hollywood to create the Worklife Storytellers Collective. 

We've hosted both in-person events (similar to a16z market development) to introduce founders to studio execs, tech leads at streamers, and award-winning storytellers. In the same way we help infra companies with GTM across developer community building and CTO introductions, we need to do the same for companies selling to creators and creative studios. 

Our first event had 60 representatives from a24, Marvel, and the best production companies from Tim Burton to Lucky Chap (Margot Robbie’s production company). 

Our next storytelling workshop will be on September 9th during Emmy Week:

Speakers:

• ​Talha Asad (Senior Vice President of HBO Programming)
• ​Jordan Temple (Producer of Abbot Elementary, Atlanta, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

​An evening discussing the storytelling behind multi-emmy award winning HBO Drama series The Last of Us, Succession, Task, DTF and emmy award winning ABC, FX, Amazon Comedies Abbot Elementary, Atlanta and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

​At the top of the evening we will get to know how Talha and Jordan look at world building, character development, episodic arcs vs. seasonal arcs and different workflows across creating television.

​The audience will have a chance to ask Talha and Jordan questions followed by 5 chosen participants pitching show ideas to Talha and Jordan and receiving immediate feedback, simulating the studios notes development process.

Worklife Storytelling

Our blog continues to be a source for expanding our network and ability to quickly jump on topics that are culturally relevant and help us tell the Worklife story in a way that connects with our audience of builders and creators.

Meet 6 People Rewriting the Rules of Media

These individuals are people creating new franchises and formats and folks we have in our immediate network and ones we’d like to continue to collaborate with in the future.

We know when algorithm changes are happening, new programs will launch, and trust in our ability to be a few steps ahead of other firms and give portfolio companies a heads up on what changes they should be aware of.

What the man behind MrBeast wishes more creators understood

Our in-person events are in-depth conversations that serve as original long-format stories we can tell on our blog. Night Media CEO Reed Duchscher is a visionary builder first working with MrBeast, now scaling the most popular creators in the world. His thoughts on working with talent, developing your own franchise, and how to work with creators has been one of our most popular conversations to date.

Why learning AI feels more like Twitch than reading a textbook – and will make you more money

The new playbook for building a career with AI is actually really fun and can land anyone their dream job. We’re on the ground meeting the career changers, AI whisperers in their industry, and individuals on the bleeding edge.

Here’s a snapshot of our stories this quarter:

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