Can go-to-market and AI skills be taught through formal programs, or only learned by doing?

Cristóbal Valenzuela · Aug 28, 2023

The best way to learn a field is hands-on: build the thing from the ground up yourself, then go as deep as you can on one project

Building a neural network layer by layer, curating the dataset and training it himself gave him a sense of how the inner parts of the system work; learning by doing helps make sense of the world

8:20 20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway

Adam Foroughi · Apr 27, 2026

Formal, structured onboarding and learning-and-development programs are the wrong approach; companies should instead hire curious people who are loud enough to get what they need and learn as they go.

He personally retained nothing from structured classes and learned by being curious on the job, and he's seen the pattern that the company's best people come in, ask questions and figure things out themselves.

36:07 20VC: Applovin: $160BN Market Cap, $5.48BN Revenue, $10M EBITDA Per Head | Why the Best Do Not Need Mentorship | Why Founders Should Not Angel Invest | Why Kindness in Business Will Slow You Down with Adam Foroughi

Matt Swulinski · Aug 15, 2026

Marketing is best learned by doing first and framing second — formal education, including university, doesn't teach the practical execution and no true A-to-Z growth bootcamp exists yet

He took zero marketing classes at NYU and learned everything by doing; understanding the framing only makes sense after you've done the execution, and you learn far faster that way

Scope: admits he hasn't been in a college recently and curricula may have changed; acknowledges Reforge and Brian Balfour have attempted this

68:18 20Growth: How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow and Superhuman | Why You Should Do Paid Ads Today and How To Do Them | How to Build the Best Referral Programs and How to Crush UGC with Matt Swulinski

Cliff Weitzman · May 9, 2026

The AI coach — someone whose full-time job is teaching the organization to use AI tools — will be a commonplace role within five years

Coaching existing people on AI matters more than hiring more of them, and leaders resist it because it feels like a waste of their time

42:54 20VC: What I Learned from 100 of the Best CEOs in the World | What I Learned from Staying with Mr Beast for 3 Weeks | How We Will Spend More on Tokens than Salaries with Cliff Weitzman, Speechify

Harry Stebbings · Aug 15, 2026

There should be a six-week, full-time, roughly $10k school that teaches people the concrete systems and processes of working with AI, and it would be a fundable, highly valuable business

Everyone is told to be AI-pilled but nobody explains what that actually means in practice; large employers like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs would send every employee through it

Scope: framed as his request for startups

67:36 20Growth: How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow and Superhuman | Why You Should Do Paid Ads Today and How To Do Them | How to Build the Best Referral Programs and How to Crush UGC with Matt Swulinski

Harry Stebbings · Aug 15, 2026

People are far earlier in AI adoption than practitioners assume — the real gap is the very first step, like setting up Claude with the right integrations and permissions

Most people simply don't know how to do the beginning step

69:21 The gap is the very first setup step