Hacker News Reader

Comment by osigurdson | Hacker News Reader

I believe this is why ycombinator does not recommend building a business on top of another company's platform. I suspect OpenAI based businesses will eventually learn this lesson.

View on HN

The number of YC startups this batch centered around OpenAI seems to belie this. Although I do remember YC stating this often in effect, at least in past, older content.

To counter my own argument, the other possibility is OpenAI like features become a commodity. I.e. build a product around OpenAI and switch to Google's (eventual) offering at some point.

However, embeddings might end up being the true vendor lock in of our time. If I've based my entire company on OpenAI embeddings (and spent lots of money on these), it isn't clear there would be an easy way to translate to another vendor's offerings.

I imagine many would like to be bought ASAP.

It's fine to build a business on top of another company's platform. You do need a contingency plan, especially if what you offer can be easily replicated in that platform.

There's no contingency plan possible on mobile unfortunately, you can't remotely switch customers to another platform.

A PWA could work in some cases, depending on the capabilities needed.

Apple vs Epic Games is currently challenging this in courts over Fortnite. You can play on other platforms but the argument is on mobile, you're forced to use their walled garden and let them take 30%.

Yes, and as per the very recent ruling, one would suggest that ycombinator is entirely correct in regards to not relying on a singular other company's platform, since they've decided that Apple is within their rights in regards to a walled garden.

The ruling still deemed illegal restrictions on making people aware that other options exist. But yes, the more one relies on someone else's platform, the more one is just a sharecropper.

You’re a day out of date. Epic lost this case.

Appealed in appeals court. It's not over yet.

It’s already lost in appeals court yesterday. The next step is the Supreme Court. Do you really think they are going to take it up?

What would the contingency plan be in this case? It seems that it would just be to build something else compelling instead. In which case it seems that starting with plan B might be a good idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com