Silicon Valley insider: AI, startups and the future of learning

From San Francisco, Christian Byza explains how his House of AI makes chance encounters repeatable, why learn.xyz moved from a consumer app to a B2B product built with design partners, and how OMR grew out of an online marketing breakfast.

Feliks talks to Christian Byza, who has lived in Silicon Valley for about twelve years, on a live call from Berlin to San Francisco. It is the first episode Feliks hosts on his own. Christian describes House of AI, his co-working and event space of around 600 square meters. He built it to increase the "serendipity of Silicon Valley": founders rent desks, VCs and accelerators host events there, and German delegations pay 1,500 dollars for a talk. According to Christian it brings in around 250,000 euros a year, is profitable and covers his rent as an early-stage founder.

Then they turn to the mood in the city: DeepSeek, Perplexity, how the tech scene relates to Trump, and why Christian sees San Francisco as the perfect place thanks to opportunity, talent and weather. He talks about his WhatsApp group of 90 German dads, about the J-1 visa he wants to use to bring a designer over from Germany, and about cultural differences: small talk at the supermarket checkout on one side, Germany's Mittelstand as a role model on the other.

The core of the episode is learn.xyz. The platform makes learning at work as playful as a language app; companies upload their own documents and turn them into courses within seconds. Christian walks through how they got there: a learning platform for crypto, early AI experiments before the ChatGPT moment, a consumer app that reached 100,000 users within a few weeks and then collapsed after Christmas, and the shift to B2B. When two large enterprise deals fell through, the team switched to design partners and had 17 customers at the time of recording.

Finally they look back at OMR's early years, from an online marketing breakfast to the Große Freiheit 36 club and on to the trade fair halls, where exhibitors took over the marketing. Christian shares business ideas he finds exciting: succession in Germany's Mittelstand, a private garbage collection service, family hotels and better link-tracking software. He closes by explaining his motto "No Bad Days", which he picked up from Satya Nadella.

Disclosure: Feliks mentions in the episode that his micro fund W3 Fund has invested in Christian's startup.

1. 00:00House of AI: a place to meetSan Francisco & Silicon Valley
2. 05:06The pace of AI startups in San FranciscoSan Francisco & Silicon Valley
3. 06:29Political mood and the tech industrySan Francisco & Silicon Valley
4. 16:02The German community in Silicon ValleySan Francisco & Silicon Valley
5. 18:24The challenge of recruiting in San FranciscoSan Francisco & Silicon Valley
6. 19:24Cultural differences and mindset between Germany and the USSan Francisco & Silicon Valley
7. 28:38Building learn.xyz: a new approach to learning at worklearn.xyz & B2B sales
8. 44:38Challenges in B2B sales and design partnershipslearn.xyz & B2B sales
9. 50:39Target groups and ideal customer profiles for the learning platformlearn.xyz & B2B sales
10. 54:55How OMR came aboutOMR & events
11. 01:01:42Transforming the event venueOMR & events
12. 01:13:39Growth and challenges of a bootstrapped businessOMR & events
13. 01:15:21New business ideas and trendsBusiness ideas
14. 01:25:05The "No Bad Days" motto and a positive attitudeMindset

1. 1

   Create a place where serendipity happens

   Christian wanted to increase the "serendipity of Silicon Valley": the chance that interesting people come to him without any effort on his part. With House of AI he built a space where founders rent desks and VCs and accelerators host events. German delegations pay him 1,500 dollars for a talk, and according to Christian, three of them often become customers afterwards.

2. 2

   Orchestrate your intros

   Christian's hack for getting meetings with VCs, journalists or talent: he makes sure several people message the person on the same day, suggesting they meet him. If five people tell you the same thing in one day, it feels like coincidence. That is also how learn.xyz got coverage in Handelsblatt, Wirtschaftswoche and TechCrunch.

3. 3

   Save every contact with context

   In his first job Christian was told to put everyone he ever meets into a Rolodex. Today he adds everyone on LinkedIn and always sends a message, so years later he still knows where they met. His line for it: "message is a date, connection is the marriage".

4. 4

   Listen to customer pull

   learn.xyz's consumer app reached 100,000 users within a few weeks and then collapsed after Christmas, because in January people go to the gym and book holidays. At the same time companies kept asking for a corporate version. The team resisted at first, but then built the B2B product because it saw a hard use case and willingness to pay there.

5. 5

   Don't rely on a single champion

   While building the product, learn.xyz chased two huge deals: a large consulting firm and a very large search engine. At the consulting firm the champion suddenly retired, and at the search engine their contact turned out to have no decision-making power. In October the team had not a single customer.

6. 6

   Work with design partners, not just customers

   After the lost deals the team set itself a goal: at least ten customers by the end of November, or they would need a different plan. Design partners pay, but they also get their own Slack, Teams or WhatsApp channel and a call every two weeks. When two customers asked for better user management, the team showed mockups on Monday and shipped on Thursday.

7. 7

   Let others multiply your marketing

   When OMR moved into the trade fair halls, the event grew from 3,500 to 16,000 visitors, according to Christian. The trick: a trade fair with many exhibitors. They want to invite their own customers and so take over the marketing for you.

8. 8

   Find ideas in what annoys you

   Christian and his co-founder keep a list of things that annoy them. It produces ideas like a better link-tracking tool, because Branch feels outdated and slow to them, or family hotels with proper family rooms instead of four people in one king-size bed. Feliks sums it up: look at what you already pay for that still works badly.

• OMRCompanyHamburg marketing festival that Christian co-founded with Philipp Westermeyer.
• Philipp WestermeyerPersonOMR founder who brought Christian on as co-founder after the online marketing breakfast.
• DeepSeekProductChinese AI model that was the talk of San Francisco at the time of recording.
• PerplexityCompanyIntegrated DeepSeek within a weekend, according to Christian.
• Holger LuedorfPersonEx-Yahoo and Foursquare, Christian's main inspiration to become an entrepreneur again.
• Rene ReinsbergPersonCelo founder who offered Christian 100,000 dollars to start his own company.
• Reid HoffmanPersonLinkedIn founder; Christian won a lunch with him at a product offsite.
• Brian JohnsonPersonLongevity entrepreneur whose motto "Don't die" Christian quotes.
• PelotonCompanyInitially got no money from San Francisco VCs, who'd rather ride road bikes outdoors.
• Florian AdomeitPersonBuilding a marketplace for Mittelstand succession with AMBER and DEALCIRCLE.
• FamiluxCompanyFamily hotels cited as an example of Christian's idea for more child-friendly hotels.
• BranchToolLink-tracking tool learn.xyz uses and that Christian finds outdated and slow.
• Satya NadellaPersonMicrosoft CEO from whom Christian adopted the "No Bad Days" motto.
• OMR Silicon Valley UpdateTV showChristian's podcast interviewing Germans in the Valley; season two starts in February.