ABOUT.

The future no longer arrives as an announcement.
It shows up as a tool in your browser.
A model inside your workflow.
A meeting you no longer need.
A job description that changed while no one was looking.
Day 1 Labs is a working studio for this moment.

SEC-01

01 / THE OPERATING THESIS

Built by two people standing in different parts of the same wave.

ne of us has been close to nearly every major technology shift of the last forty years, beginning on a Commodore Vic-20 in 1986 and moving through personal computing, the early web, the collapse of the old music business, social media, venture capital, social audio, crypto, and now AI. The other came of age inside the current shift. He produces music. He designs systems. He writes code. He builds with AI. He understands the texture of the tools before they become language everyone else repeats.

Pattern recognition and present tense pulse. One side knows what hype looks like after the room clears. The other knows what is actually new before it becomes consensus. The studio lives in the conversation between those two forms of intelligence. That conversation becomes work.

SEC-02

02 / WHY NOW

Using AI is not the same thing as becoming more capable.

The tools are everywhere. The operating systems are missing.

Most teams do not need another keynote about disruption. Most founders do not need another dashboard. Most creative people do not need another productivity sermon.

They need a way to turn instinct into structure. They need rooms where real work gets made. They need systems that respect how they actually think. They need to move without becoming generic.

That is the work.

SEC-03

03 / THE WAVES

Seven waves. Forty years. Mostly the same chair.

  1. 1986 · Personal computing.

    Commodore Vic-20. Silicon Valley. Born and raised.

  2. Late ‘90s · The read-only web.

    While Napster and LimeWire were rewriting the music business, I was working inside it, at Columbia Records (Sony Music), at the top of my game. We built a website. Sold it to a dot-com in 1998.

  3. Early 2000s · Social media.

    Started the first social media practice at Omnicom. Then built one of the first independent social media agencies in the country. The London Olympics. FedEx, ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Beats by Dre, Nike, Equinox.

  4. 2016 · Venture.

    Moved from agency to capital. Ran a venture studio. Invested in and helped build companies across creator economy, consumer tech, and media.

  5. 2020 · Social audio and crypto.

    Early investor and adopter of Clubhouse as the pandemic hit. Ripple and XRP funded our last company before this one.

  6. Now · The agentic era.

    AI is collapsing the distance between idea and execution faster than any wave before it. It is rearranging leadership, education, healthcare, finance, wellness, sports, entertainment. We are building for what is on the other side of that.

The point of the list is not the list. The point is the pattern: arrive early, build through the wave, take notes. His work has always lived near the same question. What changes when culture gets a new machine? Day 1 Labs is the studio version of that question.

SEC-04

04 / THE PEOPLE

James Andrews

CO-FOUNDER

James Andrews

Columbia Records in the '90s. Nas, Lauryn Hill, the Fugees. Brand strategy at Nike, CNN, Beats by Dre, Ecko Unltd. Founded one of the country's first independent social media agencies, with work spanning the London Olympics, FedEx, ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Equinox. A decade as principal at Atom Factory and Cross Culture Ventures alongside investments in Uber, Spotify, Lyft, and Warby Parker. Currently making AI music and AI films, running a venture room for founders working off the grid, and DJing as Rich Cacao in members' rooms from Malibu to Bangkok. Believes time is qualitative, kairos over kronos, and lives accordingly. Based in Bangkok.

Jaedon Williford

CO-FOUNDER · CREATIVE OPERATOR

Jaedon Williford

Germany. Alabama. Tokyo. Melbourne. London. Five countries before most people leave their first. He has been making things since high school: film, motion graphics, design, social. First at Black Forest Academy in Germany, then through internships in Tokyo and Birmingham. By the time he was 22, he had already shipped content, brand, and systems work across the US, Asia, and Australia. Bilingual in English and German. Native to the internet in a way only someone who came up inside it can be. Now he turns founder chaos into structured systems. The way he describes his own work: operations, automation, AI integration. The way it actually shows up: he refuses to let AI touch a project until the architecture is locked. Treats agentic systems the way a producer treats a studio, environment first, output second. Writes code the way some people write songs. Based in Melbourne.

If James has the receipts from the rooms that built the last forty years of technology, Jaedon has the ear for the room being built right now. The lab is the conversation between those two kinds of intelligence.

SEC-05

05 / THE STUDIO

Day 1 Labs is a working studio. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not an agency. Not a content brand. Not another cohort or accelerator. Not a consulting firm wearing AI language.

We build instruments for thinking and making in the agentic era. Small systems and tools, rooms and courses, agents and automations and operating structures for people who need to keep making while the ground is moving.

  • AI agents.
  • Automations.
  • Internal systems.
  • Creative operating rooms.
  • Founder tools.
  • Workshops.
  • Courses.
  • Field notes.
  • Small apps.
  • Experiments that become products.

Some we build for ourselves first. Some we build with clients. Some we ship into the world for anyone to use.

The through-line is the same. Taking the judgment, taste, and pattern recognition that used to live inside one person's head, and turning it into something operational. Shipped. Deployable. Owned.

Every day is Day 1. There is no behind. There is only what gets made from here. We ship often. Not loudly. Not randomly. Not for the algorithm. We move deliberately. We stay small by choice.

Transmitting from Melbourne · Tokyo · Dubai · Bangkok · Los Angeles.

SEC-06

06 / GET IN TOUCH

Three ways in.

We’re a small studio. We don’t take everything. When the work fits, here’s how it usually starts.

  1. Door · 01 · Work with us.

    Advisory, strategy, and creative direction for founders, executives, and teams navigating the agentic era. Sometimes a single engagement. Sometimes ongoing. Always specific to what you're actually building.

  2. Door · 02 · Build with us.

    We co-build products, tools, and systems with companies and individuals. Sometimes for cash. Sometimes for revenue share. Sometimes for equity. The terms reflect the level of belief on both sides.

  3. Door · 03 · Make with us.

    Courses, workshops, and Make, our weekly room where people build together. Open to teams who want us to come in and run a session, and to individuals who want to join the community.

Email us. We’ll tell you which door makes sense, or tell you honestly if none of them do.

● DAY1LABSAI@GMAIL.COM

If any of this resonates, the door is open.

The newsletter goes out when something ships. No cadence theatre. The Catalog updates weekly. Make happens on its own rhythm. Everything else lives in the work.

● DAY1LABSAI@GMAIL.COM

James and Jaedon