Realized there's probably pref on Databricks too, which would further lower the value of its common. On the other hand, there could have been a markdown from the 38B since August '21
Disagree there are sacred timeless skills we ought to protect; tech has and will continue to reduce our need to spend mental bandwidth on skills
Similar offline risk goes for all tech: navigation, generating energy, finding food & water.
And as others have noted, like other personal tools, ai will become more portable and efficient (see progress on self hosted, minimal, efficiently trained models like Vicuna that are 92% parity with OpenAI fancy model)
Self-hosted + self-trained LLMs are probably the future for enterprise.
While consumers are happy to get their data mined to avoid paying, businesses are the opposite: willing to pay a lot to avoid feeding data to MSFT/GOOG/META.
They may give assurances on data protection (even here GitHub copilot TOS has sketchy language around saving down derived data), but can’t get around fundamental problem that their products need user interactions to work well.
So it seems with BigTechLLM there’s inherent tension between product competitiveness and data privacy, which makes them incompatible with enterprise.
Biz ideas along these lines:
- Help enterprises set up, train, maintain own customized LLMs
- Security, compliance, monitoring tools
- Help AI startups get compliant with enterprise security
- Fine tuning service
Bingo and similar deal with Facebook. The best way to get leverage and power with FBGOOG is for advertisers to cooperate instead of compete. We are trying to do this with ecomm advertisers right now (by getting advertisers to coordinate instead of bid against each other) but goes beyond any particular ad vertical
Wait for enough confirmations where the payment becomes unlikely to reverse, which of course takes time and that's the more practical blocker for regular shops to accept Bitcoin.
This is the bull case for We that justifies a stratospheric valuation: it is the extranational life infra and connection market maker for the otherwise hyperalienated worker of tomorrow -- where corporations have surpassed "legacy" social and political units of organization and identity.
Where the valuation came down to earth was when public investors evaluated We as an incrementally better office rental company, and didn't buy the idea of We as creating and monetizing a religion.
So both forks worth more 6mo in than they were immediately after split; sounds like actually supports idea forking for a good reason can be value accretive..
There are many valid criticisms of PoW but it's not contradictory to believe PoW can work (i.e. with large enough and distributed enough miner network) while simultaneously attacking particular PoW-secured networks
Seems by and large reasonable but notably doesn't address the elephant in the room: potential their hardware has built-in backdoors for China government access. Should be simple enough to provide at least basic assurances (a la Apple)
lmao. kernel of truth to be sure but in fairness American legal system and democratic governance do strictly result in more liberty and security for individuals by and large, corner cases notwithstanding
Defer to OP but that feels like bit lazy apologist framework for status quo.
A few (unsubstantiated) guesses at reasons to counter:
1 - Medium risk medium reward opportunities exist (a currently unprofitable but otherwise promising startup addressing a 25m niche can't get bank debt or venture funding)
2 - Could decrease risk holding reward (avg. multiple of investment) constant by having small funds with managers that have deep knowledge of particular niche deploy smaller checks in markets they are better at evaluating (v. large fund managers needing to cast net wider than their "lane")
3 - Size expectation can be correlated with risk. Can decrease risk holding reward (avg multiple of investment) constant by just having smaller funds writing smaller checks for smaller companies that be happy with smaller exits or alt. upside capture (v. forcing companies that could work with small exits into chasing big inflexible exits). Sure no 100x-ers but theoretically could see higher blended fund returns
4 - Opportunities generally continuous on risk and reward calling for equally diverse approaches to capitalization
Awesome to see innovation from capital providers on the instrument in the wild. As a niche market founder wish option like Earnest existed when we were raising early financing.
Curious - to extent you're willing to share - what dynamics are like for LPs (assuming raising outside). Since median vc fund return is barely 1x, and traditional VCs sometimes blow up otherwise good niche companies by forcing them to go big or bust, targeting 3-5x returns with way faster liquidity for investors a super interesting alternative.
And if the niche market turns out to be a massive market, can still go in with eyes wide open!
I'd like to see more content like this. Find it 100x more helpful than the success stories. Karenina principle and whatnot. Would gladly subscribe and pay buku bucks for a more rigorous startupgraveyard-esque page. And would gladly contribute as well..