Collaborative Fund launches AI accelerator in Brooklyn
Community programmes pave the way forward.
On June 23rd, the first cohort of AIR (Collaborative Fund and Fictive Kin’s AI residency programme) will kick off in Brooklyn, bringing builders and creators together in an accelerator designed specifically for consumer AI projects. “We believe the most meaningful AI products won’t just do more,” programme director Carly Ayres wrote on LinkedIn in the accelerator’s unveiling announcement. “They’ll feel different.”
But AI Residency isn’t the only programme designed to rapidly upskill founders. All around the internet, options are popping up: Perplexity’s founder fellowship trains founders on its Enterprise Pro layer, group programmes cater to freelance writers and journalists, and coaches now launch “masterminds” to help people upskill and experiment in person — in small groups of people all trying to do the same thing: learn the new tools, figure out how to incorporate them into their work, and the underlying thread: stay relevant.
In many ways, staying relevant is the theme of 2025. After major companies like Duolingo and Canva have come out stating that employees will have to adopt AI or head off into the sunset, cutting contractors, and shifting to a very streamlined, almost-automated strategy moving forward, it’s no wonder tech workers — even FAANG workers — are concerned about keeping their white-collar jobs.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Fivrr, Micha Kaufman, just sent out an all-hands-on-deck email to employees, insinuating that their use of AI will be a key factor in determining who can stay in their professional field. “I’ve always believed in radical candor…” he writes. “What was considered ‘impossible’ tasks will be the new hard.” This applies, he cautions, whether you’re a “designer, product manager, [or] data scientist.”
Some have made the excellent point that Big Tech benefits by pushing the narrative that AGI is right around the corner, that the workforce will be decimated unless workers adopt their products, and that companies will be left in the dust if they’re not using AI more than everybody else. Last year, as TechCrunch reported, an Upwork study came back saying that 77% of workers thought that AI added more effort and time to their plate, definitely not less.
The good news is that even if big companies are using AI to cut workers, cut costs, and automate production and content like robotics came for factory work, it’s helping a lot of smaller creators ship new projects. Whether you’re experimenting and sharing your ideas in a group chat or discussion forum, accelerators and community forums can help make AI tools a little less overwhelming…and most importantly, spin the story so that it’s not just about automation, efficiency, and scale, and more about curiosity, creativity, and vision.
And so goes the sentiment that keeps circulating social media: that today, when everything is seemingly easy to create (or generate), it will be meaning and ideas, rather than just execution, that make an individual or startup stand out; the reasoning behind the work, the intangible design decisions that influence the final look and feel of a product. Or as AIR puts it: “Taste is a competitive edge.”💡