10 Years of Twine: Pivots, AI Training Data & The "Cockroach Year" | Stuart Logan | June Macc XYZ

Stuart Logan, founder of Twine, shares the unfiltered 10-year journey of building a global freelance marketplace. Recorded at the June Macc XYZ meetup. Stuart discusses the realities of startup life, from the initial pivot from a creative social network (Clowdy) to surviving a near-fatal cash crunch in 2017. He explains how a random inbound request led to the accidental birth of Twine AI (sourcing human data for AI model training), the hard truths about raising venture capital in the Northwest, and how AI coding agents have recently allowed his small engineering team to clear a decade of tech debt. 00:00 - Introduction 00:53 - What is Twine? 02:41 - The 10-Year Journey & Pivots 10:24 - Growing the Freelancer Base 13:20 - Sourcing Data for AI Models 18:11 - Fundraising in the Northwest 23:52 - AI's Impact on Engineering & What's Next 28:47 - Audience Q&A