YC offers early interviews for AI companies
ycombinator.com
ycombinator.com
Every time there is a major shift in tech you see this pattern repeat but I don't recall seeing it on that scale again since ~2000, even though lots of stuff has happened since then (for instance: the mobile revolution).
Investing in AI for the sake of companies using AI because it increases their chances of funding is the hallmark of a bubble, and that will probably end the same way it did before. But if you manage to pick the winners early it will pay off in spades. The big question to me is whether or not those winners will be part of the first wave or the second, usually it takes a while before a new technology really comes into its strength.
Until then there is a pretty big risk that what looks to be an early winner will be displaced by a party from the second wave which is better positioned to take advantage of later, more mature versions of that technology, which by then may well be able to displace those 'early winners' by a couple of guys with an open source package.
Not an easy time to be an investor.
A specific technology doesn't really change either of these.
"I am going to sell pet supplies to people who need pet supplies"
Okay, how many people need pet supplies and why would they use you instead of the store down the street (in the 90s)?
"I am going to sell books to people who need books"
Is obviously a better proposition, even before we get into the fact that it's "online" or uses any specific technology!
And on the profit side, books don't spoil and are small and light.
Bezos is on record in an interview somewhere as saying that he didn't care what they sold on the internet -- they picked books (and later music and movies) because they were good fits to store and ship.
> Total addressable market and value proposition are key.
> A specific technology doesn't really change either of these.
Bezos chose books because they ship well. This is because he was going to use a new technology (the web) to sell goods and needed items that would work with this model well. So the decision to sell books had little to do with TAM and everything to do with technology. Basically the opposite of what you originally asserted.
There was no Pets.com business model that would have worked, with any technology shy of a free energy transporter.
In contrast, Amazon proceeded thusly.
1. There are a lot of people who buy books.
2. People who buy books would value a wider selection. (than current local options make available to them)
... therefore, what combination of technologies exist that allow Amazon to deliver on the above? (web storefront + centralized warehousing + efficient shipping)
The point of bubble businesses is that the first two components, neither of which have much to do with technology, are often absolutely missing.
Fundamentally sound business plan + new technology >> ?? + new technology
Too many bubble businesses are the latter, and people invest in them despite the ??.
The Pets.com business model is essentially the same as Chewy, which does work. As far as I know, Chewy has not discovered a free energy transporter.
Not sure what your point is regarding vet and pharmacy services. Businesses expand. Pets.com, had they been successful, would have likely done the same thing. To use your Amazon example: obviously most of Amazon's revenue is no longer generated by selling books.
From a revenue perspective though, your argument is prudent. Maybe targeting books rather than pets helped it lessen its relative burn rate.
After a wow-effects of the first days, few users are still using it. If I talk to users they say features are awesome but they are not actually using it. Really funny.
Do you have experience of OpenAI API-based product that has high retention ?
perplexity.ai comes to mind. I introduced it to my students at uni a few weeks ago and they now use it extensively over Bard/ChatGPT. There are others too, like copy-writing tools (jasper.ai, copy.ai) who seem to be doing well. Besides, from experience, GitHub Copilot is so good, I can barely program without it.
We use the base models but once fine tuning becomes available on 3.5/4 we will be looking into that
Is it https://prompthero.com/ ?
By the way the OP of the Twitter thread commented in that thread you linked. He has the same HN username as Twitter.
Whether that is smart is also an open question.
If it's actually easy to get money? How would I find a VC who would be impressed by my actual technical ability as opposed to something like marketing or networking prowess? I tend to not spend a lot of time on making slick web pages and promoting myself but focus on implementing features.
Right now my own thing is a ChatGPT plugin that generates web pages including appropriate images using a template and stable diffusion. I am working on building in a CRUD system that GPT-4 will have concise docs for, as well as a user login system and an API proxy and secrets management. This way the system should be able to create fully functional websites.
The previous version integrates GPT-4 with fly.io VMs so that it directly executes commands in a loop to accomplish tasks.
But the plugin is on hold to work for some other startup so I can make rent and stuff. I am building out a simple generative fill inpainting/outpainting editor inspired by Playground.ai. Previously for this other startup I created a Dreambooth tool and a live editing scribble image generation thing with Controlnet.
And before that I was working on a Slack bot where you can ask it questions about PDF or other documents, and another that used GPT to write SQL for querying a specific table and optionally creating charts on the fly.
I guess I am just suspecting that maybe working on all of these other startups to pay the bills isn't necessary if I ask the right person for money. Which I never really seriously considered as an option.
But can you elaborate on why you put it like that, "a bit of a charlatan"?
More about this:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...
I think I have been ineffectually following something like the "third road" for ten years already. Although in my case maybe instead of a road up a stately mountain, it's more like getting lost in a ghetto, because I do not seem to progress beyond the low-paying contracts or get any significant interest in my startup attempts. Probably I have just gotten used to them.
Business then takes what an academia produces -- i.e. papers / methods / algorithms and implements it to generate value for customers.
It doesn't align with startups as well in case if you have a method and require a lot of compute to produce a model -- you need capital for compute and that's not a typical garage startup.
I'm really curious whether there is any opportunity left for YC-sized startups in AI.
I lot of really cool developments happen on github -- but again that's open source, not ventures to generate money.
Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250704 - July 2008 (380 comments)
A New Experiment: The RFS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766703 - Aug 2009 (57 comments)
YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766796 - Aug 2009 (56 comments)
YCRFS 2: New Paths Through Product Space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768425 - Aug 2009 (21 comments)
YCRFS 3: Things Built on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904193 - Oct 2009 (67 comments)
YCRFS 4: New Ways to Use Live Video - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904195 - Oct 2009 (19 comments)
RFS 5: Development on Handhelds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=950781 - Nov 2009 (44 comments)
YCRFS 6: iPad Applications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160140 - March 2010 (106 comments)
YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1638004 - Aug 2010 (29 comments)
Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 - Jan 2012 (664 comments)
New Requests for Startups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8308666 - Sept 2014 (390 comments)
Requests for Startups Refreshed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592619 - Sept 2016 (124 comments)
Request for Startups: Water - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311257 - Jan 2017 (224 comments)
There's availability API but it won't tell us if the archived webpage does indeed display content (say, if it was behind a paywall or cookie banner): https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php
archive.is, which breaks past some of the paywalls, apparently (haven't tried it myself) supports the Memento protocol: https://github.com/palewire/archiveis/blob/master/archiveis/...
> There's availability API but it won't tell us if the archived webpage does indeed display content (say, if it was behind a paywall or cookie banner
Right - that's the problem. It takes a human to tell if the archive link is worth anything.
I do want to do something better with this someday (someyear?) - most likely a way for community members to submit and vet archive links, and then (if so) an "archive" button in the detail bar to point to it.
There it is, that's where you want to be - selling shovels during the gold rush.
There are shovel sellers which are making tools.
Then there are application makers that end users see that are made with shovels.
That’s a pretty important difference.
Is that why Stripe, TicketMaster, Moneygram, Checkout.com, TransferGo, VISA, etc and many other companies continue to use it?
> That’s a pretty important difference.
Nope. The important difference is that crypto has energy efficient alternative methods of consensus available today such as proof-of-stake, byzantine fault tolerance (BFT), etc and even a former PoW blockchain (Ethereum) cut their emissions by 99.99% [0] by switching to a proof-of-stake consensus method. For crypto it is possible to switch to greener methods.
AI (Deep Learning) continues to destroy the planet since it has no efficient alternative methods available for training, fine-tuning and inference. This means their methods waste tons of resources, water and electricity. [1] [2]
It is a serious issue in the field after decades of its existence all to produce unexplainable black-box AI models which cannot reason and have to be retrained, fine-tuned again once it gets confused by a single pixel or regurgitates nonsense output.
The AI hype is another grift that the VCs are taking advantage of just like they did with thousands of crypto companies. The reality is, 90% of these AI / crypto companies will fail and the remaining 10% will still be around that are useful.
[0] https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/ethereum-blockchain...
[1] https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-ai-water-185000-gallons-training...
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/chatgpt-data-centre-water...
“Use” is inaccurate. Accept and immediately sell. It persists in being a pot of unsophisticated money, so yes, it will be accepted.
Nope. Inaccurate to you. They would NOT use it if it was "useless".
The truth is, they continue to use crypto in their services.
Of course they would. It’s useless, not worthless. If it were useful they’d actually use it.
It is being used and businesses are using it in their products today.
Companies like Moneygram would not use Stellar if it was useless for them and their customers and would instead announce that they are shutting it down after trialling it. They seem to have seen utility in it for their use-case. The same can be said for the other companies I mentioned.
Again, they are using it and that is the truth.
Useless, not worthless. I happen to be familiar with that case. It’s great for sales. Useless for performance. (It might become useful one day.) Hence, marginal-enough adoption and a lot of marketing.
A couple years ago I counselled a friend in banking to do something with Ripple. It helped him win deals with crypto firms, and likely helped their wealth managers, too. Worthful. But useless.
Nope. Useful today for people using Moneygram worldwide (In the example I gave). Moneygram used Stellar for their own use-case and its customers use it today for that same utility, but this time with no bank accounts for the end user.
> A couple years ago I counselled a friend in banking to do something with Ripple. It helped him win deals with crypto firms, and likely helped their wealth managers, too. Worthful. But useless.
Now with Stellar today, it is used by many businesses like Moneygram, and aid programmes [0] are trailing the network [1] for the same use-case. Again, it would not be used by such organizations or even trailed or piloted in the first place if it was 'Useless for performance.' or had no utility.
[0] https://stellar.org/aidassist
[1] https://stellar.org/press-releases/unhcr-launches-pilot-cash...
Moneygram originated with cash or money order in, cash or money order out. No bank account needed.
> with Stellar today, it is used by many businesses like Moneygram, and aid programmes
You’re linking to a pilot. As it happens, I also worked with UNDP years ago. We similarly launched pilots to try and find uses for novel technologies. (Mine was in mobility data from cell phones.)
That’s what’s happening here. They are looking for a use. That should be encouraged. Looking for something doesn’t mean it is found.
Even better, meaning that the smart decision was to add another rails (crypto) which after choosing something like Stellar and trailing it, they found it was useful for them and their customers, to continue using it. Otherwise it would have been scrapped years ago.
> That’s what’s happening here. They are looking for a use. That should be encouraged. Looking for something doesn’t mean it is found.
Indeed, it is a pilot which means more interest in the use-case which was found AFTER Moneygram trialled it and are using it right now today.
The same is said about the other companies I mentioned. Far from the first broad claim of it all being 'useless' which we all know that is blatantly false.
You’re not seeing how something performative can be both profitable and useless?
Maybe it's semantic. I'm not saying crypto is useless as a moral judgement. The bumblebee keychain on my backpack is functionally useless. But I like it, so it's worth something to me. But it has never carried a key, it never well, and its artistic value is objectively passable as best. It's useless but with worth.
If we say MoneyGram's crypto integrations are useful as marketing, I'll agree. But again, as someone familiar with that particular example more than most, if those customers would have given business for money stained with mayo, MoneyGram would be slathering it on.
Moneygram and their customers with other organizations using the Stellar network is not performative. It exists and works today, right now and it was that 'something' that was used, tried and tested first before making a decision and it turns out that the use-case was valid for them (and many others).
Henceforth, it is not 'useless' going by the OP's original broad claim.
> Maybe it's semantic. I'm not saying crypto is useless as a moral judgement. The bumblebee keychain on my backpack is functionally useless...
Again, the main use of the Stellar network was serious enough for MoneyGram which out of the thousands of other alternatives used to get on another rails (crypto) for their worldwide customers after assessing that use-case.
But you've only made it clear that to you it is "useless" and no user or business would even bother to use it, if it was found to be as such in the first place.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36734710.
Per YC's publicly available records, the earliest they funded a ML/AI business was in 2008. They aren't late, but this AI specific Early Decision may be in reaction to funds like AIGrant.org, SouthParkCommons, Neo et al.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?tags=AI&tags=Machine%...
>early interview slots for the YC W24 batch
The general deadline for W24 is September 11
But this early round for AI companies is available until July 17