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Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

sierra.ai

21–30 of 168 posts

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#21

I think this is generally a good product because businesses that previously had zero phone support can now afford to have something. However, the hard work of actually building out the various workflows and decision trees is not automatic. Previously, a call center employee would receive abuse from a caller for being unempowered to make a decision. Instead, an LLM will perform the same role. Ideally, businesses will…

I don't think businesses that previously had zero phone support can afford Sierra.

They seem to be a "for pricing, let's go play C-level golf" type of company.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#22
post #5
post #2

Damn, for just a moment I thought the Sierra Online company was coming back. I want a new official Quest for Glory game.

Every single word domain seems to have become some new AI company.

and not only one https://www.cyera.com/press-releases/cyera-raises-400m-to-me...

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#23
post #2

Damn, for just a moment I thought the Sierra Online company was coming back. I want a new official Quest for Glory game.

Assume Sierra owners are too young to know what Sierra games means. I was absolutely obsessed with their logo (1) at school time. 1. https://preview.redd.it/remember-sierra-games-1979-2008-they... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQi7olp-tw

Wow seeing that hit me surprisingly hard. Such good times

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#26

I think this is generally a good product because businesses that previously had zero phone support can now afford to have something. However, the hard work of actually building out the various workflows and decision trees is not automatic. Previously, a call center employee would receive abuse from a caller for being unempowered to make a decision. Instead, an LLM will perform the same role. Ideally, businesses will…

As a tech literate customer, my willingness to entertain AI chatbot decision trees is rock bottom. I have no patience to try to find the correct incantation to actually fix something (or the, “before I transfer you to a person, let me try to help you first”).

For myself - and admittedly maybe I’m just far out on the long tail of customers - I think these need to be treated like self driving cars, where 98% of the way there just isn’t good enough to cut it for me.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#30

If you (like me) are hearing about this for the first time, Bret Taylor is the co-founder. > Bret is Co-Founder of Sierra. Most recently, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.

The coauthor (and presumably cofounder) is Clay Bavor. He's a Google exec who was the face of their VR efforts when he was there.
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