i like ai agents and talk about growth
San Francisco, CA
Joined July 2025
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Elsa Cai retweeted
our product @ditto_dates just hit 210k college signups yesterday, 1% of the entire us college population
so we surveyed them to learn about how gen z actually feel about ai, here's the results:
30% think data centers waste water
40% think ai will steal their jobs
25% think ai only generates slop based on stolen data
it takes more than squeezing muse into instagram for gen z to truly adopt ai native products
Elsa Cai retweeted
No app. No swiping. Just a text.
@ditto_dates sends 205,000+ college students on real dates, entirely over iMessage, powered by @PhotonHQ .
→ text Ditto who you are
→ get one match messaged to you every Wednesday at 7pm
→ the date is planned: time, place, person
Ditto is changing the interface of modern dating, with the help of Photon!
Check out the blog:
photon.codes/blog/ditto-brin…
Elsa Cai retweeted
if you are not fully chromed out, driving SVJs and bouncing maybachs by the age of 15 its lowkey over
Elsa Cai retweeted
just use instinct bro. I just told it to ask my friend when she's free to hang instead of just texting her myself. I typed 13 messages in muse to order this flower on doordash instead of 2 taps in the app.
bro it’s the future bro... but ditto did get me a match yesterday
Elsa Cai retweeted
We built a @Muse that sets up dates for you. 185k college students are already using it.
Step 1: Text @ditto_dates your type.
Step 2: Your agent simulates dates, finds a match, books the time and place, and starts a group chat with you two.
Step 3: You just show up.
Our goal is to help people spend more time with each other than with their phones. Less swiping, more real IRL moments.
The world's first agent that finds you love.
Elsa Cai retweeted
we’re putting together parties for people with the most aura in sf at
try-cali.com
Elsa Cai retweeted
everyone has a roy lee take right now. here's mine, from the one time he had zero reason to help me and did anyway
last summer, right after the $15m from a16z, @im_roy_lee was the hottest founder in the world
we at @ditto_dates had a few months of runway left. live at 3 schools. nobody in VC knew we existed. raising was also brutal in summer cuz every gp was on a yacht in italy
as a consumer founder, i knew the only way out was to go viral. so I content farmed every day. roy liked a few posts, but we'd never talked
as summer wound down, i knew my time was running out. i had one shot left
@elsaprofitable and i went all in on a $3k launch video that gamified ditto's experience as a social assistant that sets up dates with your type. the plot: an abg finds a 6'2 hot nerd who brings her flowers, through ditto
i hit post and prayed it will take off, cuz if this didn't work, we were cooked
a few hours in, it was on a viral trajectory, but it needed one more push. so i dmed roy for a repost, fully expecting to get ghosted. i had never spoken to this man in my life
a few hours later, right as i was losing hope, i got a notification
roy tagged me. but he didn't just reposted
he wrote a long, thoughtful review of the space, the product, and even offered to invest
then he dmed me. gave me guidance on post formatting, what to post next, how to keep the momentum going. when he found out I was planning to raise, he even broke down his own cap table and introed me to investors
the post went ahead and got 500k views, from the attention and momentum, we closed a round, work our way to 200k users, and ditto is now taking colleges by storm
i know too many ppl who raise a few milly or get into yc and start ghosting others. roy was a 21 yo who just raised $15M and was the most talked-about founder, and he spent his time helping a founder he'd never met
not justifying everything he did. just wanted to show a side of him people didn't see, because he did the same for me
Elsa Cai retweeted
Human UGC is just as much slop as AI UGC at this point.
The real question isn't "Is this AI?" It's "Does the story actually make you feel something?"
Nobody subscribes to slop.
The reason those ai fruit reels and asian short drama apps go viral isn't brain rot. It's the same reason people binge a 400-page novel in one sitting. The stories hit universal human emotional arcs: revenge, love, injustice, an underdog proving everyone wrong. The underlying emotional wiring is real, even if the video isn't.
That's why people pay for those drama apps after one clipped episode on TikTok. The story hooked them.
Where I draw the line though is when the product itself is human in nature.
Imagine a dating app running fully AI generated UGC. Love is lived by humans, so you want it portrayed by humans. The micro expressions, the imperfect looks, the nervous energy. And even when AI gets good enough to fake all that, faking it defeats the point, because authenticity is literally what's being sold. Most consumer products live on that same truth. You're selling to people, and people want to see themselves.
There are exceptions: B-roll, product demos, companies where cost, customization, and convenience beat emotional resonance - AI video makes sense. It's taste, product, audience, and the problem you're solving.
But there's one thing I won't change my opinion on. Video making is an art form. Human storytelling comes from lived experience, emotional vulnerability, and consciousness. AI runs on probability, mimicking patterns it never felt.
Humans will always tell a better story. Not because the output looks different, but because the source is different.
Elsa Cai retweeted
I just came across this essay I wrote in 2012 predicting that hard tech startups would become a big thing. Not for the last time, YC applications turned out to be a good predictor of future trends.
The Hardware Renaissance: paulgraham.com/hw.html
Elsa Cai retweeted
Ditto office warming party this Friday
See you there, invite only
@ditto_dates – at San Francisco, CA
Elsa Cai retweeted
it's time. @nozomioai x @ditto_dates x @spermracing
we're throwing the biggest party in sf for interns and college students.
sign up below.
