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Ben Taylor Profile
Ben Taylor

@bentay

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Following
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194
Statuses
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founder of @spec (hiring, DM me!) // prev yc w19 (acq)

San Francisco, CA
Joined November 2014
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
4 months
Your Mac just got a brain. đź§  Spec proactively drafts replies, summarizes docs, and helps before you ask. It connects knowledge and memory across iMessage, Slack, email, and your calendar, finally making your apps work together. Goodbye silos and context switching.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
33 minutes
YC drilled this lesson into my head: momentum isn’t just progress on metrics or hitting goals. It’s a contagious emotional gravity that pulls people in (talent, investors, media). Suddenly, everyone’s working harder, paying more attention, deals get done easier, recruiting
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
20 hours
Building something that gets early attention is dangerous Your brain quietly assumes that level of excitement is the baseline So when things normalize, it feels like failure instead of progress Nothing actually went wrong You’re just sober now
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@jaiyagill
jaiya
1 day
this is my favorite part of our website! the right imagery can articulate your whole brand story in a snapshot & in our case: digital overwhelm → hitting escape → the natural, human moments you get back these perfectly capture that contrast of @spec. not as just another
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
1 day
My favorite product metric isn’t DAU or retention. It’s when someone says, “I forgot this was even running” but refuses to turn it off. Invisible and irreplaceable beats loud and addictive. Every time.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
2 days
We’ve spent the last decade teaching people how to prompt machines. But imagine having to constantly tell your assistant what to do instead of them taking initiative on your behalf. At some point, that stops feeling like help. It’s the same issue with most AI today. It’s
@spec
Spec
2 days
What would it look like if AI noticed things before you did? Most AI today is reactive, it waits for a prompt. We’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when intelligence starts working ahead of the problem instead.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
2 days
The hardest truth about startups is simple. Your smartest friends who picked the right company will out-earn you by an insane margin. Founders pretend this does not haunt them, but everyone has one friend who got filthy rich by accident.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
3 days
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
4 days
I really do feel bad for Boomers… Imagine going from rotary phones and typewriters To someone’s scrawny ass little kid named Timmy, who spams “6,7…” daily and resides in his mom’s basement, scamming you out of your life savings with the latest and greatest AI technology.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
7 days
If CES proved anything this year, it’s that the future is arriving unevenly. One aisle: chips dropping early, robots doing real labor, Mercedes shipping hands-off driving. Next aisle: Lego bricks screaming and a hologram desk that panics under overhead lighting. Never seen
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
8 days
I stopped looking for “AI experience” and started looking for people who get visibly annoyed when the world is slower than the idea in their head
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
9 days
startups love designing for “aspirational users” aka imaginary people with perfect routines and empty inboxes build for the chaotic, distracted, overwhelmed humans we actually are or lose to someone who does
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
10 days
There was a point where I thought the constant buzzing in my head was just… adulthood. nope. It was software acting like a toddler that needs you every five minutes. Ambient computing sounds like the first thing built by someone who actually likes humans.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
10 days
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
11 days
I used to think about runway above all. Just buy time, stay alive. But if nobody sees what you built, did it really matter? Sometimes survival isn’t enough-you need to make a statement or it’s game over anyway
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
14 days
Most software talks to you like a system. The future will talk to you like a witness. A system tracks what you do. A witness remembers what you’re trying to become.
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
16 days
Biggest lesson from the early years of my career: Individual effort has limits. Teamwork is the real unlock. When people share responsibility, everyone wins. When they don't, nobody does. It sounds silly, but a lot of tech teams could take a lesson in humility and low ego
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@bentay
Ben Taylor
17 days
Everyone has that one idea they’re “saving for later” Later isn’t real Later is a myth we invented to feel responsible Most good things happen when you stop pretending you’re waiting for permission
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