Hacker News Reader

Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

I've had similar experience using LLMs for static analysis of code looking for security vulnerabilities, but I'm not sure it makes sense for me to found a start up around that "product". Reason being that the technology with the moat isn't mine -- it belongs to Anthropic. Actually it may not even belong to them, probably it belongs to whoever owns the training data they feed their models. Definitely not me though. Curious to hear your thoughts on that. Is the idea to just try for light speed and exit before the market figures this out?

View on HN

That’s 100% why I haven’t done this - we’ve seen the movie where people build a business around someone else’s product and then the api gets disabled or the prime uses your product as market research and replaces you.

Does that matter as long as you've made a few millions and just move on to do other fun stuff?

Assuming you make those few millions.

There are armies of people at universities, Code4rena and Sherlock who do this full-time. Oh and apparently Anthropic too. Tough game to beat if you have other commitments.

I don't entirely fit in to modern capitalism - my values are a little old fashioned - quality, customer service, value, honesty, integrity, sustainability.

wild that so many companies these days consider the exit before they've even entered

Every company evaluates potential risks before starting.

Depending on how much of a bubble it is. When things really heat up it's sometimes more like "just send it, bro".

that's not what this is though, the "exit" is often viewed as "get rich so I don't have to do it anymore"

It is considered prudent to write a business plan and do some market research if possible before starting a business.

yes but traditionally how often was the original business plan "get acquired"? this seems like a new phenomenon?

the exit is the business

Isn't that first step? Consider either sustainability or the exit. You start a business either to make a living or make a profit to make a living. At least in most cases.

Thus thinking of can you sustain this for reasonable period at least a few years. Or can you flip it at end should be big considerations. Unless it is just a hobby and you do not care about losing time and/or money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com