Dragoncatcher: The new funnel, part 2

[The new funnel, part 2](/lab/ai-funnel-2/)

Steve Krouse, talking about Val Town’s growth in July, [writes](https://blog.val.town/2026-july?utm_source=Robin_Sloan_sent_me):

The majority of those customers were referred to us by AI.

Previously we heard about Buttondown’s first glimmers of AI referral business … Val Town makes even more sense, because it is literally THE place to go to deploy small apps —

Given that this is now a growing opportunity, I’m sure there’s a new “agent optimization” field growing fast, and beyond the obvious/sensible —

It does seem significantly more difficult to game than the Google search index, but I don’t have that black hat mind —

The goal of course is to become “the default pick” for X … the one that Claude Code recommends before the user even asks! What a flood of referrals —

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