alexa_throwaway

Thanks for writing that. It may be that Alexa made the right decision to pass (time will tell, you're right the valuation itself isn't the best barometer) but the point of my post was simply that the Alexa leadership team felt very arrogant and disrespectful regardless of whether they made the right decision. They acted like we needed them, whereas in my opinion time has shown it was more the opposite.

I can't speak for all startups, but at my company we treat even the tiniest startups with respect, and even if we can't work together we wouldn't approach that decision the way Alexa did.

Anyway, as I mentioned in another comment, the past is the past. The Alexa leadership team is being shaken up and I wish them the best going forward. Just sharing my experience here because it's relevant to the thread.

We're still tiny compared to Alexa, but we have over a million MAUs so we're not tiny for a startup.

At present, Alexa itself is not a direct competitor, although a large and growing use-case for Alexa skills would benefit directly from our tech. This may change if Alexa gets its act together, but based on the past year I'm not holding my breath!

It's not Alexa hooked up to some gimmicky LLM. I don't want to give away too many details given that this is a throwaway account, but the way Alexa's ecosystem works is they have "skills" Alexa users can instantiate. Our API would have increased the utility (and therefore usage) of some of the top skills by quite a lot.

I think of the Alexa team the same way I think of juiced up bodybuilders who think they can beat up anyone even though they've never trained MMA. The Alexa team looks in the mirror and sees big muscles, but they don't know how to use those muscles to fight. Yes, the strength and muscle helps, but ultimately to do well at MMA you have to develop specific skills, and you need to start with humility.

Anyway, the past is the past. It sounds like Jassy is focused on turning around this division, which is a good thing IMO.

Throwaway here.

I'm the CEO of a fast-growing AI startup. Alex asked to meet with us about a year ago (when we were about 1/10th the size), and after asking us to prepare lots of materials, they indicated they wanted to buy us or invest in us. People warned us not to talk to them because they have a reputation for gathering technical detail, and then trying to copy it rather than striking a deal. Our software could have radically accelerated and improved the Alexa experience basically overnight.

At one point in the meeting, the head of Alexa's M&A/investment team said "tell us how much you think you're worth." I threw out a number, and he laughed and left the room.

Today we're valued at more than that number and Alexa's core experience hasn't changed in the past year. They haven't been able to copy us. The Alexa leadership team has some hubris IMO.