Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by cousin_it » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

tombert wrote: 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.

That series is over, and the magical feeling of being in an open-ended fantasy world is really hard to replicate when we're not kids anymore. Loom is another game that gave me that feeling.

But there was one idea in QfG that I wish more games would use. Namely, designing three different solutions for every problem the player is facing. This idea works so well to create a sense of possibility in a game, I don't know why it got forgotten.

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

#32

Post by el_benhameen » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #20

htx80nerd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI customer support is trash and everyone hates it , but it makes the Wall St numbers go up, so it's a good thing.

AI support generally sucks but I actually wouldn't mind if everyone used it for the initial call routing portion. Beats an IVR tree or waiting for someone to just redirect your call to the real queue.

I respectfully disagree with the initial routing point. I very strongly prefer a traditional tree to “I’m your voice assistant! In a few words, tell me how I can help!”.

The tree is structured and gives me an immediate sense of how to map my task to the support offering. If I’m calling, I probably have an issue that I can’t self-serve resolve via the customer portal or whatever, so walking the tree lets me get an idea of who can help.

The “voice assistant” gives me no sense of what the system is capable of or how to take advantage of those capabilities. So I’m left guessing at phrases or functions based off of the assumption that there’s still some kind of tree-like structure that’s been abstracted away. Same outcome, more cognitive overhead, plus I usually have to shout in my best William … Shatner … impression to get it to understand me.

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

#33

Post by HDThoreaun » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #21

linkregister wrote: post #12

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.

All of big tech other than apple has zero phone support unless you pay for enterprise support subscriptions.

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

#34

Post by tootie » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #12

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…

Last time I tried using real-time chat support for a technical issue, I spent 30 minutes explaining my problem to a human only to find out they were a sales rep whose only solution was to sell me more services. Once I said I didn't want that, they transferred me to tech support who gaslit me and left me on read long enough to make my session time out.

I think of support channels are just there to deflect customers and not really support anything. An AI bot will have infinite patience for that kind of interaction. Empowerment is never part of the equation.

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

#35

Post by throw03172019 » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #14

linkregister wrote: post #12

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…

AWS can do this out of the box

Strong disagree here. AWS can give you the tools to build yourself but not an out of the box all in one solution for this problem.

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

#36

Post by vel0city » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

el_benhameen wrote: post #32

zamadatix wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI support generally sucks but I actually wouldn't mind if everyone used it for the initial call routing portion. Beats an IVR tree or waiting for someone to just redirect your call to the real queue.

I respectfully disagree with the initial routing point. I very strongly prefer a traditional tree to “I’m your voice assistant! In a few words, tell me how I can help!”. The tree is structured and gives me an immediate sense of how to map my task to the support offering. If I’m calling, I probably have an issue that I can’t self-serve resolve via the customer portal or whatever, so walking the tree lets me get an ide…

The other side is if you already know the tree you can automate dialing the right tones to get you to where you need if you call it often enough.

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

#37

Post by eaenki » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

I remember waiting for uber next to him in SF one night 10+ years ago. This dude must be the son of some mafia boss or some shit and have some crazy blackmail to raise billions for companies that are copies of products where he’s the 12th company doing the same thing.. never turning a profit or anything and yet raising ever more money. doesn’t make sense otherwise

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

#38

Post by rashkov » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

reconnecting wrote: post #10

tombert wrote: 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

It occurs to me just now that the logo is in fact a mountain and not a breaching Orca whale like I'd always thought

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

#39

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

captn3m0 wrote: post #11

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.

[deleted]

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

#40

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

pmdr wrote: post #4

So we're supposed to believe that removing humans from customer support will lead to better outcomes? > Ensure you only pay for the value Sierra delivers with outcome-based pricing. Yeah... that won't last.

Their secret is that they have hoards of fake AI Customers who will call into their client's AI Customer Support and respond to surveys saying they were extremely happy with the support, so the client has to pay for perfect simulated outcomes.