AI & I Meet the Slowest Startup Incubator in the World—Pumping Out Billion-dollar Companies
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Mar 4, 2026 
Dan Friedman, operator who builds service+software companies like Moxie, and Sam Gerstenzang, incubator partner who grows real-world+software businesses to multimillion revenue. They discuss building med spas and funeral services, their slow incubator that scales then hands off leadership, choosing unsexy defensible verticals, and how they use AI agents for customer discovery while rejecting synthetic call validation.
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Moxie Launched Pre-ChatGPT And Adapted Later
- Moxie launched just before ChatGPT and scaled to Series C with 600+ customers and ~200 people.
- The company began without AI in mind and later adapted AI as an operational tool rather than a core design choice.
Get Reps By Specializing In Early Stage
- Specializing by founding stage yields repetition-driven advantage: they repeat the zero-to-$1M playbook across companies.
- That specialization produces rare early-stage reps most founders never get.
Prefer AI Durable Over AI Native When Core Work Persists
- They distinguish AI-native startups from AI-durable ones and prefer AI-durable: use AI to speed ops without changing the core service.
- Example: med spas won't be replaced by robots soon, but AI can optimize marketing and support.