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Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

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Re: Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

#31

Post by fragmede »

bbor wrote: post #26

Fantastically written article by someone who doesn’t realize (or articulate?) that they were part of a terribly unique, terribly exploitative movement that is reaching its natural conclusion. And, of course, I was lucky. Two of the fifty companies I backed are now among the 30 largest software companies in the world. And my IRR from inception has been consistently above 50% per year…for fifteen years. Of course, my s…

Earlier in the letter, he writes:

> Two of the fifty companies I backed are now among the 30 largest software companies in the world. And my IRR from inception has been consistently above 50% per year…for fifteen years.

But then he also writes:

> Right now I have enough money to do what I want. I don’t have enough money that other people do what I want.

I don't know Jerry Neumann's financial situation better than he does, but the man's been doing VC early-stage investing since the 2000s so I find it hard to believe he doesn't have enough money to get other people to do what he wants. Maybe not self-fund a competitor to OpenAI in this environment, but that seems like a failure of his imagination on all the possible companies he could fund. $50k would be enough to get the right someone to do what he wants for a couple of months.

Re: Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

#32

Post by justanotherjoe »

gwern wrote: post #11

> So why quit? Three reasons. First, I’ve felt for a few years now that the startups I’m seeing don’t seem so much like progress as just shopkeeping. This isn’t a dig: there’s money to be made razoring a thin slice off a huge market, and there’s certainly less risk in that than there is building a market from scratch. But it’s just not that interesting. The excitement I had as a 14-year old in 1979 trying to understa…

Even if programming could be changed drastically by LLM, that still doesn't address the fact that all sectors have reached this 'software optimum' that he suggested.

Re: Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

#34

Post by tsimionescu »

dangus wrote: post #30
colejhudson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suspect that a core reason for Jerry's PoV is that the dynamics of the (zeitgeist-related) software industry do not currently favor small teams. That's counter to the ethos of Silicon Valley and it's guy-in-a-garage mythology. Jerry would've been 14 around 1980, plus or minus a couple of years, which would've been in the heyday of personal computing. TRS-80s, Apple IIs, the IBM PC, its clones, etc. Then, and for the…

Nah, you and the parent comment to you are not quite there. It really isn’t exciting because the technological shifts have already happened. The “Industrial Revolution” has ended. There’s no remaining industry that isn’t served by plenty of software and hardware solutions. The Internet is done, it exists. Smartphones are done, computers are done, cloud computing is done, and that’s about as good as it gets. AI is jus…

As an LLM-skeptic, I still think this is too pessimistic as an outlook for the future. I do think there is a good chance that LLMs as they exist will not change anything nearly as significantly as the hype is predicting. But I think there is scope for the technology, if it continues developing, to significantly help people.

The most interesting and clear AI-based product I can imagine is a true personal assistant, that can autonomously handle tasks like "book me a barber's appointment this week" (while taking into account my work days, my meetings, my other personal appointments, etc) or "I want to meet up with Joe, Susan, and Mary for a nice dinner, book us a table" (and your personal assistant would sync up with their personal assistants, or with themselves directly if they don't have one, to arrange this, and suggest some possible venues and so on). And it would help remind you of important upcoming events, help organize your shopping and so on. And of course, it would do all of this semi-interactively ("The best slot I'm seeing for your barber appointment would be on Tuesday at 3 PM, but you have that call with Andrew, can that be moved?").

All of these things seem relatively doable in principle, with existing technologies, as long as AIs improve on their reasoning skills and someone spends the time and effort to connect a single AI to several core technologies (in this case, email, calendars, web search, maybe some reservation apps, and some camera apps to help recognize various things).

Re: Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

#35

Post by tsimionescu »

fragmede wrote: post #29
mikepurvis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot still needs to be done to make the design pipeline accessible to normal people. Any clown can set up a bambu and print objects they find/buy online, but it's a huge learning curve to get from that point to being able to actually create your own parts, especially stuff that integrates with the complex shapes of some existing object. Recent examples from my life include wanting mounts for flashlights, a thing to…

That would be an application for VR goggles, and it seems Adobe has Medium for that. https://www.adobe.com/products/medium.html

No, VR goggles can't scan an object and generate precise enough measurements of it to create a basic 3D model that can attach to it. And they don't particularly help in refining this base model afterwards either, because they don't help in any way with the hardest part about 3D interactions, which is not the visualization, but the actual editing/interaction part, especially for fine details.

Re: Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

#36

Post by mizzao »

chrisdirkis wrote: post #24
cortesoft wrote: post #17

> If it were true that financiers on the whole make profits slowly for years and then, every once in a while, lose them all and more in sudden “black swan” events, then there should be some way to lose money slowly for years and then suddenly make it all back and more. Black swans are awful in traditional finance, but they’re the winning lottery ticket in venture capital. Isn't this what every VC is doing? This is wh…

Specifically, he's not just investing in startups, but investing in ones that have a factor that is either unknown or unknowable. That's a different strategy from YC's "Invest in promising founders" or the typical VC "Invest in early stage startups with good metrics".

It must have been "promising founders working on an idea with an unknown or unknowable factor", right?

I can't imagine it working out so well without that qualifier.

Re: Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter

#38

Post by j4coh »

tsimionescu wrote: post #34
dangus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you and the parent comment to you are not quite there. It really isn’t exciting because the technological shifts have already happened. The “Industrial Revolution” has ended. There’s no remaining industry that isn’t served by plenty of software and hardware solutions. The Internet is done, it exists. Smartphones are done, computers are done, cloud computing is done, and that’s about as good as it gets. AI is jus…

As an LLM-skeptic, I still think this is too pessimistic as an outlook for the future. I do think there is a good chance that LLMs as they exist will not change anything nearly as significantly as the hype is predicting. But I think there is scope for the technology, if it continues developing, to significantly help people. The most interesting and clear AI-based product I can imagine is a true personal assistant, th…

I can understand why this person sees a natural language personal assistant as shopkeeping, though, compared with the invention (for example) of the internet or what it was like around the time personal computers started existing.
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