I’m going to say something that might sound crazy. The keyboard, the tool you're probably using to read this, is on its way out. Not for everything, not overnight. But for the work that truly matters—the creative sprints, the strategic decisions, the human connections—it’s becoming a bottleneck.
I’ve been in Silicon Valley for a while now. I’ve seen a lot of things come and go. I built and sold two companies, RemoteTeam and MovieLaLa. I’ve written over 200 angel checks into companies you’ve probably heard of, like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Scale AI. And if there’s one pattern I’ve learned to spot, it’s the moment a technology moves from a gimmick to a genuine competitive advantage. That moment is happening with AI voice right now.
But it wasn’t always this way. I was a skeptic for years.
The "Press 1 for Misery" Era
Remember those old automated phone systems? The ones where you’d yell “Representative!” into the phone, only to be met with a cheerful, robotic, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Please press or say ‘one’ for sales.” It was infuriating. That was my mental model for “voice technology” for the better part of a decade. It was rigid, dumb, and the opposite of helpful.
My first-generation smart speaker wasn’t much better. I’d ask it to play a specific song, and it would confidently play something completely different. I’d ask for a simple fact, and it would either get it wrong or tell me it couldn’t help. It was a novelty, a toy for setting kitchen timers, not a serious tool for a founder trying to build a business.
For me, technology has to solve a real problem. It needs to be faster, cheaper, or better than the alternative. For years, voice was none of those things. Typing was just more reliable. My fingers were faster than fumbling with a clunky voice command.
The "Wait, This Actually Works?" Moment
My perspective started to shift around three years ago. I was in the middle of due diligence on a startup—I can’t say which one, but they were working on something in the logistics space. The founder was a whirlwind. He talked a mile a minute, jumping between product specs, market analysis, and his vision for the future. I was trying to keep up, scribbling notes on my laptop, but my typing was a clumsy filter between his brain and mine.
After the meeting, he sent me a follow-up. It wasn’t an email. It was an audio file with a near-perfect transcript. He had used a new AI transcription service. He had just talked, and the machine had captured everything, complete with speaker labels and timestamps. It was a lightbulb moment. He had spent zero minutes typing up meeting notes. I had spent 45 minutes trying to decipher my own messy scrawl.
That’s when I realized the game had changed. It wasn’t about just recognizing words anymore. The new generation of AI could understand context, handle different accents, and even parse complex jargon. The accuracy had jumped from maybe 80% on a good day to a consistent 99%. That 19% difference is the entire world. It’s the difference between a useless toy and an indispensable tool.
How I Use Voice AI Every Single Day
Today, voice is integrated into almost every part of my workflow as an investor and author.
When I’m reviewing a pitch deck, I don’t type my notes. I walk around my office and talk to my phone. I use an app that transcribes my thoughts in real-time. I’ll say things like, “The total addressable market slide seems weak. They’re using a top-down number that feels inflated. Dig into the bottoms-up analysis and ask them for the assumptions behind their customer acquisition cost.” It’s all there, captured perfectly. I can then send that transcript to my team or drop it right into our deal flow database. This saves me at least 5-10 hours a week. That’s an extra day of work, every month.
At RemoteTeam, we were obsessed with asynchronous communication. But we were still mostly typing. If we were building it today, conversational AI would be at the core of the platform. Imagine a new employee joining. Instead of a 200-page wiki, they could just ask a bot, “How do I submit an expense report?” and get an instant, spoken answer with a link to the right form. Imagine a customer support system that could understand a user’s frustration from the tone of their voice and automatically escalate the ticket to a human. The potential to make remote work more efficient and more human is massive.
My Unpopular Opinion: Keyboards Are for Clerks
This is where I’ll probably lose some people. I believe that within the next five years, for most creative and communicative work, the keyboard will be seen as a tool for data entry, not for creation. It’s a tool for inputting structured data into a spreadsheet. It’s not a tool for brainstorming, for storytelling, for leading.
Thinking is not a linear process. It’s messy, it’s fast, and it’s verbal. We talk through problems. We brainstorm out loud. The act of typing forces you to slow down, to structure your thoughts prematurely, to linearize an idea before it’s fully formed. It’s a filter. Voice is the opposite. It’s a firehose. It allows you to capture the raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness and then shape it later.
I wrote the first draft of my book, "Becoming Top 1%", almost entirely by speaking. I would go for long walks and just talk, chapter by chapter, story by story. I ended up with over 60 hours of audio. The transcription was my raw material, a mountain of clay that I could then mold and refine. If I had tried to type it all from scratch, I’d probably still be on chapter three.
How to Stop Typing and Start Talking
You don’t need to be an AI investor to start using this. You can start today.
- Get a good transcription app. There are dozens out there. Find one that works for you. Otter.ai, Descript, and even the built-in voice memos app on your phone are great places to start.
- Dictate your next three emails. Don’t type them. Just speak them. It will feel weird at first. You’ll probably edit them before you hit send. But notice how much faster you get the initial draft down.
- Record your next brainstorming session. The next time you’re trying to solve a hard problem, hit record. Don’t worry about structure. Just talk. You’ll be amazed at the ideas you can unlock when you’re not trying to type at the same time.
This isn’t about replacing every single keystroke. It’s about recognizing the right tool for the job. The keyboard is a hammer, and not every problem is a nail.
The next wave of innovation won’t be written. It will be spoken. The people who master the ability to think and create at the speed of speech will have an almost unfair advantage. So, put down your keyboard and start talking. Your next big idea is waiting to be said.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I apply this thinking to my own situation?
Start by identifying the core principle behind the opinion, not the specific example. Then ask yourself: does this principle apply to my context? If yes, test it in a small, low-risk way before going all in.
What experience informs this perspective?
This perspective comes from over a decade of building companies in Silicon Valley, two successful exits (RemoteTeam to Gusto, MovieLaLa to Gfycat), and investing in 200+ startups including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Scale AI. I write about what I've lived.
What's the most common pushback you get on this?
People often push back by citing exceptions or edge cases. And they're usually right that exceptions exist. But building a strategy around exceptions rather than patterns is a losing game for most founders.