Storyteller → CMO → AI-Native GTM Operator | 4 Exits | $6B+ Pipeline | Partner @ Lipman AI Group - Helping companies become UNCATCHABLE
San Diego, CA
Joined December 2008
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Sometimes AI describes your company like you're somebody that it used to know: ghosting rebranded companies, swapping brand identities, inventing origin stories nobody asked for. Does your brand have a secret second reputation living in the machines that's telling inaccurate stories to your buyers? Find out what they're saying behind your back. open.substack.com/pub/jonsam…
It's pretty clear that Bending Spoons' execs, Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli and Luca Ferrari, would never make it through their own hiring process that rejects 99.9% of job applicants. It's a company that's 100x harder to get into than Harvard! What type of person would want to work for a firm that vets out diverse human identities in favor of hiring 20-something signal lemmings? They practically admit to practicing age bias in the WSJ story.
Source: Wall Street Journal story, "The Mind-Bending Company That Gets a Million Job Applications—and Rejects 99.9%" archive.ph/kY6Th
Your brand can show up in an AI answer and still lose the buyer. Enemy citations happen when AI uses your competitor’s content to explain you, turning visibility into a trap and comparison into a quiet kill shot. Read the full substack @ open.substack.com/pub/jonsam…
Big thanks to the San Diego Vistage community for a memorable event on the USS Midway, building relationships with leaders who truly understand the journey.
Proof debt is the gap between what a company claims and what the market, buyers, and AI engines can independently verify. The modern CMO’s job is no longer just sharpening the message, but building the external proof system that makes the company’s story credible, findable, and repeatable.
Read my latest substack, The CMO’s New Challenge: Proof Debt
lnkd.in/gaCQwv8D
Big moment for TompAero.
Honored to see the company named a winner of Airbus Defence and Space’s “AI That Protects What Matters”innovation challenge at #VivaTech. TompAero is building autonomous cargo aircraft for the real world: shared airspace, no dedicated infrastructure, and certifiable deterministic AI designed to make and communicate pilot-level decisions safely.
Thank you to Airbus Développement for the recognition.
Fantastic energy at Identiverse in Las Vegas so far. Asaf and I are meeting with partners and colleagues throughout the week to discuss some exciting developments. If you’re around, let’s connect and grab some time to talk.
Excited to join Mighty Humans and help advance the work of making technology, storytelling, and human potential feel more connected.
I’ve been thinking about the strange emotional split AI creates. It brings amazing business efficiencies, for sure. But it also makes me wonder what happens to the artist, the craft, and the long road to mastery. My Substack post is about that tension, why AI disruption is real, and why solving the human side of the equation is paramount.
The AI Unemployment Apocalypse Isn’t Inevitable
open.substack.com/pub/jonsam…
TompAero is landing at VivaTech 2026, Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.
June 17–18, we’ll be with our partner, Orange, in Hall 7.2, stand 2D16. Come see our aircraft, The Flying Suitcase, our UAV platform, and learn more about the people and systems turning autonomous aircraft into real aviation capability at a fraction of the cost. We’re there to meet investors, partners, and builders of what’s next.
Reach out to book a meeting, or just swing by. You’ll want to see this! vivatech.com/
At TompAero, our aircraft may not be the star of the story. We’re more about the mission, but we love our "flying suitcase" too!
Interested in becoming an investor? Contact me. Seed round underway. tompaero.com
Read the post @ linkedin.com/posts/jonsamsel…
Have you ever been on a conference call when the side project you’re working on in the other window is more interesting than the meeting you’re supposed to be in?
Read why this keep happening to me with TompAero.
Full post at: linkedin.com/posts/jonsamsel…
Why would Bpifrance Tandem get behind TOMPAERO?
Because it's a story about a deeptech team trying to solve a hard, real-world aviation problem: how to move small, urgent, high-value cargo faster when hospitals, labs, factories, or emergency teams cannot afford to wait.
A clear mission, a technically ambitious aircraft, a path toward civil aviation integration, and a founding team built around complementary expertise.
Tommaso Passerin d’Entrèves brought the aerospace vision.
Alexandre Menai added the software and systems mindset.
Christophe Lacaze strengthened the embedded autonomy layer.
Pierre-Alain Cabot brought the operational reality of air traffic control and aeronautical navigation.
A bold aviation concept with the right people, ecosystem, and support structure needed to move from idea to industrial reality.
Read the full story (in French) @ lesdeeptech.fr/actualites/De…
My latest Substack, “What AI Believes,” uses Google’s recent guidance on optimizing for generative AI features to frame the bigger issue: SEO makes the brand findable. The surrounding market makes the brand believable. So when buyers ask AI who you are, does the answer reflect your website and your owned narrative, the outside market, or the company you used to be? Read the post and let me know your thoughts! open.substack.com/pub/jonsam…
Before TompAero was an autonomous aircraft startup, it was just a kid staring at the sky. Tom didn’t inherit aviation—he inherited the pull of it. His father’s dream of flying was left unfinished, a hangar door left half-open. Tom took that ache and turned it into motion. The deeper I get into this company, the more I realize it started long before the first blueprint. It started in the quiet space between a father’s unfinished dream and a son who kept looking up. tinyurl.com/55bddr6n
TompAero’s tagline is “When the cargo can’t wait.”
Because urgency is human: a kidney for a patient, a critical part for a stopped factory, a delivery where “eventually” is not an option.
We’re building for real weather, real airspace, and real missions.
tompaero.com
