Dragoncatcher: The new funnel, part 2

Val Town, a platform for deploying small apps, reported in July that the majority of its new customers were referred by AI, according to founder Steve Krouse. This highlights a growing trend of AI-driven referrals, which Krouse suggests may lead to a new field of 'agent optimization' to become the default recommendation by AI tools like Claude Code.

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 /lab/ai-funnel of AI referral business … Val Town https://www.val.town/?utm source=Robin Sloan sent me 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 — To the blog home page /lab/