109: Justin Bingham, Clay Unicorn & Marc Gigliotti, AI Happy Hour

For the third year running, Boston Speaks Up took over the Startup Boston Week stage for a three-hour live podcast marathon. This year, we dove into three big themes: raising capital the right way, modern venture studio models, and the evolving role of AI in product building. In our final segment, we closed with a live version of our recurring AI Happy Hour, featuring Justin Bingham, Clay Unicorn and Marc Gigliotti. Beers in hand, we explored the promise and pitfalls of today’s AI tools. Justin summed up the shift in a single arc: “Three years ago, no one even knew what you meant by generative AI. Now we’re in full-blown agentic coding, where you can just say ‘I want this’ and something gets created.” But both he and Clay stressed the limits: “AI is like a team of brilliant junior developers. They can do incredible things, but you still need senior oversight.” The group also mused on hackathons, with Justin noting how much more impactful they’ve become: “The amount you can build in 24-48 hours now is almost hilarious. I’m surprised there isn’t a hackathon every week.” We ended with a conversation about fundraising in the AI era — where the “napkin sketch” has been replaced by weekend prototypes, radically changing how founders show traction to investors.

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