Four For Friday | April 25, 2025
LF170 | Funding impact networks, McKinsey on AI agents, AI as a democratizer, luxe blood cleaning + Granola, super notetaker.
Welcome to this week’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week, together with a bonus: AI Tip of The Week.
1. How to fund impact networks
So you want to build an impact network? Adrian Rôbke suggests seven models:
I would add an 8th one; to use the network to deliver innovation insights and proprietary data to establish a fund. I think we tried most of these in some form at Aging2.0 over the years. One challenge is whether to stick with one model - a high risk bet - or test different types and risk stakeholder confusion.
The So What? Impact networks are attractive concepts but still frustratingly hard to finance. We need to make it easier to rapidly test and scale different models here.
2. McKinsey Report: What is an AI agent?
A new McKinsey report looks at AI agents and their applicability in the enterprise. It defines them as “a software component that has the agency to act on behalf of a user or a system to perform tasks.”
It suggests there are five main types of AI agents:
Individual augmentation ("copilot" agents) enhance personal productivity by assisting with content creation, coding tasks, and knowledge retrieval for individual users.
Workflow automation platforms orchestrate and execute existing business processes, requiring significant implementation effort, change management strategies, and ongoing supervision.
Gen AI-native agents reimagine specific business domains with artificial intelligence at their core, rather than merely adding AI onto pre-existing systems.
AI-native enterprises transform their entire operating models, redesigning interaction layers, processes, organizational structures, and business models around artificial intelligence capabilities.
AI virtual workers function as digital employees or team members within existing company structures, potentially capturing value quickly without requiring full organizational transformation.
It suggests that teams of agents will soon be working together, checking each other’s work and becoming integrated parts of the enterprise:
The So What? It’s hard to keep up with the AI agent discussion. One frame that has been useful for me is the new shift from software-as-service to service-as-software - agents replacing services that used to be done by people. More on this in future LFs.
3. OpenAI founder on its democratizing nature
Andrej Karpathiy, an AI OG, Open-AI co-founder and Senior Director of AI at Tesla reflects that AI has flipped the script on technology diffusion - adding massive value to regular users and consumers, rather than capital owners (yet), miltary or governments, who normally start the big new tech (e.g. Internet, space…)
“If you go back through various sci-fi you'll see that very few would have predicted that the AI revolution would feature this progression. It was supposed to be a top secret government megabrain project wielded by the generals, not ChatGPT appearing basically overnight and for free on a device already in everyone's pocket. Remember that William Gibson quote "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed"? Surprise - the future is already here, and it is shockingly distributed. Power to the people. Personally, I love it”
The So What? There’s a massive opportunity to help the 400m or so active users of Gen AI models to use it for more than just replacing the occasional Google Search. Giving everyone an agent (or a team) could be a novel move…
4. A UK clinic is offering to remove microplastics from your body
For a around £10,000 a session, you can get your blood filtered and (some of) the microplastics removed. Clarify Clinic say that just one session will remove 90% of the microplastics in your blood larger than 5 microns.
The So What? Easy to scoff - these high ticket products can make people think longevity is just for the rich. But this service is tackling an important topic and will no doubt soon face competition that brings down prices.
Bonus AI tool: Granola
Have been using Granola for a while to record meetings - it’s remarkably good at summarising and bringing out key points, but most usefully is integrated as an app into your computer sound board so it doesn’t need to loudly announce itself on Zoom calls. Now it integrates with Noton for 1-click uploads.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome, especially on the new audio features.
- Stephen