Why the future of consumer AI isn’t a better “buddy,” but a better bridge. # 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for Consumer AI It seems to me that in 2025, enterprise AI started to develop some kind of shape. Product paradigms started to emerge for AI-as-coder, for AI-as-spreadsheet-analyst, for AI-as-audiovisual editor. We’re still in the early stages, but we’ve moved beyond the empty chat box.

For over a year now, I’ve been working non-stop on a new startup called Outgoing. The opportunity to build Outgoing feels rare and special – a chance to build something that is Big and Important and potentially Society-Shaping – so I am grateful to be working hard on it. I want to tell you why Outgoing feels like such a unique and promising project to me.

Our cities are full of experiences that delight, inspire, and connect us, yet it’s always been technologically impossible to organize all the millions of choices. At Outgoing, our mission is to get people off their screens and out exploring the real world, and thanks to the latest crop of large language models, we’ve made several key technological advances that have allowed us to build the world’s best concierge for IRL experiences.