Media and the Machine

Ty Ahmad-Taylor is a founder & two-time CEO with a career at the center of media & tech. He started at The NY Times, built and sold his startup FanFeedr to Samsung, and later became a product VP at Meta and Snap. 

Today, he’s on the boards of GoPro and SFMOMA—and working hands-on with AI.

One of the wildest parts of this conversation: Ty rebuilt a startup that once took four and a half years to build… in just five minutes with AI.

Ty and I talk about what the AI shift really means for media companies.

Not theory. Real examples.

We focus on content, distribution and money.

Key Takeaways:
 • How Ty rebuilt FanFeedr—a startup that took four and a half years to build—using one AI prompt in just five minutes (using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity) 
 • Why Yahoo Sports shows up everywhere in AI tools—and why The Athletic from The NY Times does not
 • What media companies gain and lose by blocking AI bots like ChatGPT and Google/Gemini
 • Why AI agents and scheduled tasks change how products get built
 • How tools like Granola, ChatPRD, and Lovable compress months of work into minutes
 • What Ty learned running AI workshops with OpenAI, Perplexity, Delphi, and Listen Labs
 • Why affiliate revenue may replace ads as Google traffic falls
 • Ty’s simple 3-part framework for AI product development

Family too — We also talk about how Ty thinks about AI and his kids, and why human skills still matter in an AI world.

If you run a media business, build products, or create content, this episode will help you understand what’s actually changing—and what to do next.

Thanks, Rob