A quick note before this week's piece: I opened up free 15-minute intro calls this week. If you're a founder or operator and want to compare notes on GTM, positioning, partnerships, intros, or what you're building, you can book one here →. Five slots a week, first come first served. We also refreshed rihs-ventures.com. The site is now a clearer reflection of our offering: advisory, community, and venture building around AI, markets, and infrastructure.
Want to catch up in person?
Our next curated NYC Founders & Operators rooftop meetup is next Thursday on the LES, with friends from Clay, Legora, Phantom, Oak HC/FT, and General Intuition, and exited founders. We have 3 spots left. Post-Tech-Week timing on purpose. The right people in the room, without the founder-tourist noise. RSVP here →
Every week, I meet strong founders and GTM leaders. The ones pulling away in AI and B2B SaaS are not always the ones spending the most on growth. They are the ones winning the battle for trust, by engineering trust intentionally. AI has commoditized almost everything. Outbound is cheap. Content is cheap. Personalization is automated. Product features converge faster than ever. The one thing there is no AI shortcut for is trust. In 2026, whoever earns trust first wins the customer, the talent, the round. Here are the 4 key trust engines you can’t automate.
1. People
IRL, community, advisors, evangelists. A strong endorsement from the right person still opens doors AI never will. Trust moves through people. Your customer's first serious conversation about you is often not with your website. It is with the friend, investor, operator, or founder who said you were worth taking seriously. The best early-stage companies usually have 3 to 5 real evangelists who help close the next 10 customers.
2. Voice
Authentic founder content. One post per week. Minimum. We trust people we have seen, heard, and developed a feel for. Founders who do not post are increasingly invisible. One thesis-driven post per week is the floor. Not feature updates. Not generic launch posts. Actual opinions about where your category is going, what customers are getting wrong, and why your company deserves to exist now.
3. Proof
Build in public. Real numbers. Real customer stories. Not vibes. Not rage-baiting. Not "comment CLAUDE for my secret growth hack." Real proof means customer names, specific outcomes, revenue, retention. Before-and-after stories. Clear evidence the market cares. Sophisticated buyers can smell cherry-picked vanity metrics in 30 seconds.
4. Craft
Taste, intent, judgment. How you do everything. How you write the email. Who you invite to the dinner. What venue you choose. How your deck feels. How your landing page reads. How your team follows up. The median in 2026 is AI-generated slop. Craft is now one of the cheapest ways to look 10x more serious than your competitors.
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Partner notes
Mercor is hiring former consultants, lawyers, doctors, and finance pros to train frontier AI models. Async, remote, and a good side gig if you have domain expertise.
Granola is the AI notetaker I use for meetings now. Genuinely better than anything I've tried, and you get the first month of the paid plan free via this link.
See some of you Thursday. Will be a good room.
Stephan
