I used to think growing a small vegetable plot would be a way to commune w nature, be at peace w the world
After slugs, aphids, mildew etc I realize I had it backwards
Gardening is a Darwinian death match w/nature & battle for scarce resources
Sad at this loss of innocence
When I started my first company we were 5 people & 2 Google engineers offered to join "as a package" @ low price of just 10% each. Said their alternative was to start a company
I said "great-you should go start your own company"
And they both stayed @ Google another 5 years
Throughout history of tech some of biggest companies in world started off highly capital efficient
1970s: MSFT bootstrapped until pre-IPO
1980s: Dell bootstrapped until pre-IPO
1990s: eBay and Y! raised minimal $
2010s: Instagram and Whatsapp stayed lean
2020s: Midjourney
Increasingly wondering if this AI wave is what the 90s internet wave felt like-
*Giant tech disruption
*Who wins at ~everything up in the air
*Incredibly fast changes every week in tech and capabilities
*User behavior moving fast
Everything suddenly feels up for grabs ๐ช๏ธ
When I started my first company, I was paranoid about sharing information or telling people what I was doing outside of the company
When I started my second company, I was much more open with information to investors, advisors, other founders in the market etc
A founder I know was going to meet with a big name and asked for advice for meeting.
Tips
1. Start the meeting with agenda so person realize you will make good use of their time & show you prepped
2. Come with something useful for them. Intro they may not have within yourโฆ
We are right on the cusp of large changes. May take 10 years to fully show up, but the tech is all here to do it
Simple example -
Every book will be launched in 100 languages at once, with audio versions of them all
Tech is here today. May take a decade to substantiate
"Theโฆ
The 1960s "overpopulation is going to kills humanity, cause mass famine, and should cause us to halt progress and not have kids* thing" didnt quite pan out
*remind you of anything today?
Anyone working on AI/co-pilot for next-gen data stack?
E.g. co-pilot to help navigate dbt, Spark etc etc versus "better BI visualizations" or "text to SQL"?
Things to do when asking for an intro:
-Start a fresh clean email with a relevant subject line someone can forward easily. Dont reply with a bunch of crap inline alongside other musings, questions etc
-Explain who you are and why you are interesting/special. Drop some brandโฆ
When I led
@perplexity_ai
's first round of funding I was massively impressed with velocity to ship, and ability to hire amazing people
Sill true today ๐ฅ๐ช
Who would be on a real 30 under 30 today?
Interesting to wonder by sector - which sectors today have the most young people with lots of responsibility or impact?
Who are they?
Maybe in retail it is Mr Beast and Kylie Jenner?
CC
@patrickc
OpenAI has hit the magic moment Google had 2003-2008 where
-it was shipping interesting significant products on regular basis (Gmail, Chrome, Android, bought Youtube etc)
-it sucked in much of best talent
-it was center of tech (and popular business) universe
1/N "Defensibility & Competition"
Is the "wrapper on GPT" co defensible?
Is any early SaaS company?
This posts argues most startups start without moats & build defensibility over time
Anecdotally seems like founder migration was:
Early COVID -> leave cities and become nomads
Mid COVID -> Miami & Austin
Jan-Aug 2022 -> Move to NY
Aug-Sep 2022 -> Stasis
Oct-Now -> Move back to SF
This year it looks like >4 companies will reach GPT-4 level models
Given its lead, one could guess OpenAI should be at GPT-4.5 or 5
This should reshape some segments of both AI world, as well as open up the next set of industries to transformation by GenAI
Conversation w/
@arthurmensch
CEO of
@MistralAI
@figma
*Mistral models
*OS & opencore AI
*Fine tuning, context windows,...
*Vertical AI models
*EU & French startup scene
Huberman's podcast = him dating 6 women at once
My podcast = me stopped in street by AI engineer who wanted to point out nuances of nearest neighbor search in various vector DBs
More AI companies with sudden virality + paying customers should just bootstrap
0. Running co for cash may be best success
1. If it does scale, being profitable or near to it creates lot of options
2. it may not scale, or only work for a few months
3. Why get on theโฆ
Search products in 2000s used to be fact-centric or directional (help you navigate to X).
Search is increasingly merging w LLM chat products. Search has now split into 3 types of products:
-Search engine. Help me find facts / get somewhere
-Opinion engine. Here is what myโฆ
Nvidia spiked to a new all-time high after reporting earnings/revenue beats. YoY revenue growth was down 13% in Q1 but Q2 guidance was massively above expectations ($11 billion). That would be a new record high for revenue (prior record: $8.3 billion) & a 64% YoY increase. $NVDA
Just realized USV analyst/associate program spawned not 1, but 3 awesome founder/CEOs -
@jml_campbell
- CEO of Tagomi, sold to Coinbase,
@christinacaci
- CEO of Vanta
@thedanigrant
- CEO of Jam
๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ
Should be noted only two companies in list w โequalโ cofounders w same equity (3 total have two)
One of great myths of tech is equal cofounder ownership as norm vs exception
Wow Klaviyo is a new record for Founder-CEO ownership at IPO: 38.1%
Edges out Atlassian co-founders just a smidge who were at 37.7%
(although Atlassian co-founders together owned more and are still
#1
)
Really helps to burn almost nothing on the way to IPO (just $15m)โฆ
We are happy to announce that we've raised $73.6 million in Series B funding led by IVP with participation from NVIDIA, NEA, Bessemer, Elad Gil, Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Databricks, Tobi Lutke, Guillermo Rauch, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan.
LOL love this commentary
"Sequoia - the GOAT"
"Benchmark- the GOAT"
"Founders Fund - amazing with Airbnb etc"
"USV - kings of DPI"
"Elad... [confused look], Elad Gil is really popular with founders - this was a founder survey right?...." โค๏ธ
โThe Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential commandโ - George Orwell 1984
SF, Oakland & increasingly LA telling us crime is "dropping" while retail stores continue to close due to crime & threat of violence to workers ๐ค
When I work with founders today, ones who act overly secretively roughly correlate to less success
No one knows how to help you, promote you, or mention you to customers or employees for you...
I always remember when I was at Google in the mid 2000s and social was happening
I was at a meeting where many people (now known as social "experts") were pounding the table saying social products had no moat and would never be sticky
๐พAnyone have data on founder ownership of software companies at IPO?
Was hoping to optimally have:
*Company name
*Founders % ownership
*Employees %
*Investors %
๐๐๐
Increasingly wondering if major funding for OSS LLMs will come from a company that does not have a strong horse in the race
For example, IBM funded much of the development of Linux
Who will be the IBM of multimodal foundation models? Amazon? Someone else?
We've gotten more than 150 applications so far! Awesome to see.
One other idea (
#11
) I'll add into the mix: a Web3 version of LinkedIn
- it would be great if companies could issue soulbound NFTs to verify employment or credentials
- build a front end to explore employee andโฆ
๐ฅFireside chat - me w/
@satyanadella
Chairman & CEO Microsoft๐ฅ
Live, Mon Nov 6, 11:30am in SF
Sign up
Topics
*AI revolution
*Code, productivity & AI agents
*How Microsoft became a ~$2.5 trillion company
Many early stage equity discussions / negotiations end this way
Lots of misunderstandings on equity out there, and often asking random friends for advice yields bad or misinformed advice...
Exciting w
@apoorva_mehta
, cofounder & original CEO
@Instacart
Topics
*How to parse startup ideas
*Early things Instacart did that couldnt scale, got them in business
*Hypergrowth at startup & people
*Why start another co / act 2 in life?
Video:
Exceptional conversation with
@dougleone
of
@sequoia
and
@patrick_oshag
Covers culture building, sales, hiring, and many aspects of what makes companies, as well as Sequoia, top of its game
๐ฅNew update on global unicorn market cap by city and region๐ฅ
Looked at ๐
*Where did new unicorn market cap form during COVID?
*Generative AI unicorns
*Ratio of Barry's/unicorns by cities
(thanks to
@shreyanj98
for help with this, data from
@CBinsights
)
๐จ BREAKING: OpenAI just released 128k context GPT-4 Turbo at 1/3rd the price.
This means GPT-4 is cheaper, faster, and can now read a prompt as long as an entire book.
The announcement comes with additional huge news for developers:
- New Assistants API for Code Interpreterโฆ
Founders who do not communicate much to their main investors, for example, tend to die off sooner
Often companies go dark when a few quarters away from death
Too much secrecy to core insiders can also be viewed as a signal for fraud or lack of traction (see Theranos, FTX)
This research gives the same vibe as Wuhan Lab coronavirus gain of function research....
(I say this as someone who thinks other things Anthropic has done, like constitutional AI is positive/interesting)
New Anthropic Paper: Sleeper Agents.
We trained LLMs to act secretly malicious. We found that, despite our best efforts at alignment training, deception still slipped through.
This post is not about whether a company (or other organizations) should, or should not have, viewpoints on every political and current event. That is ultimately up to the organizationโs governance.
However, if you run an organization that is being distracted from its coreโฆ
Big congrats to
@redditspez
@alexisohanian
and
@Reddit
team on many years of work and building one of the biggest products on the internet ๐ช๐ผ๐ฅ๐ฉท
What is time horizon until 50%, 90%, 99% of โimportantโ code written solely or predominantly by AI?
At what point should one not recommend CS as a great major for jobs? If not CS then what**?
(**Note: liberal arts as suggestion not realistic IMO)
Nice read on reverse engineering of GitHub Copilot ๐ช. Copilot has dramatically accelerated my coding, it's hard to imagine going back to "manual coding". Still learning to use it but it already writes ~80% of my code, ~80% accuracy. I don't even really code, I prompt. & edit.
๐ฅFun convo w
@zoink
CEO of
@figma
*Whatโs next for Figma
*Expanding beyond design
*How AI will change design
*AI UX
*Creativity augmentation & the iterative loop
Fun chat last night w
@reidhoffman
We discussed:
-AI platforms
-Open source vs closed
-Big tech: what will Google et al do?
-Co-pilot for everything
-AI, safety, and society
***Watch here***
"AI Platforms, Models, and Open Source"
Highly speculative, overly long, probably incorrect post on:
-Do foundation models become an oligopoly market?
-Do OS LLMs get back by major co, country, or philanthropy?
-GPT N vs GPT N-1
Capital efficiency is sign of
1. Capital. People are willing to pay up for your valuable, differentiated product
2. Efficiency. You run a tight ship, do not overhire, and bootstrap from customers
During COVID/ZIRP many people forgot about capital efficiency
New blog post for founders: Sell The Product Before It Exists: . It's counter intuitive, but founders tend to build more than they should before they take it to market. Your product and your GTM are inextricably linked. Start selling before you build it.
Hillary Clinton on the Israelis and the Palestinians today on The View.
Covers everything from Hamas to humanitarian pauses to Yasser Arafat to Anwar Sadat.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, big tech incumbents are going to come out swinging on AI
*This should increase heat for for consumer AI startups
*This should be positive and accelerate B2B AI access to APIs & new capabilities
Exciting few weeks & quarters ahead
If investor acts badly/spreads info, u can cut them off
Some founders have 2 email lists-1 all investors ("help me w intro" & another for people who kept their trust ("Here are our metrics")
Investor update templates here:
AI proxy built over weekend by
@braintrustdata
Allows you to easily swap in any LLM while using OpenAI SDK - so can try different LLMs, build redundancy etc
๐ฅ
Amidst the chaos, we built something: an AI proxy that lets you use a variety of providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, LLaMa2, Mistral, and others) behind a single interface w/ caching & API key management.