Worst person one knows has a legitimately good opinion.
OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
161–170 of 323 posts
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat. Amazon might be a good analogy here. I'm old enough to remember when Amazon absorbed billions of VC money, making losses year over year. Every day there was some new article about how insane it was. There's no technical moat around online sales. And lots of companies sell online. But Amazon is still the biggest (by a long long way) (at least in the…
A couple other comments touch on the point I want to make, but I feel they don't nail it hard enough: if today you told me you had a website that was 100% technologically identical to Amazon, but you were willing to make slightly less money, you'd still have no products... as a user I'd have no reason to go there, but then without users there is no reason to sell there, so you have a circular bootstrapping issue. Tha…
Look at Android vs Apple phones in the US. HN tends to really underestimate the impact of branding and product experience. It’s hard to argue anyone’s close to OpenAI on that front (currently).
Not to mention they’ve created a pretty formidable enterprise sales function. That’s the real money maker long term and outside of Google, it’s hard to imagine any of the current players outcompeting OpenAI.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, who does Gruber usually shill for? The question is - why would that one company want this hot take out there?
I'll bite because I find this compelling: if Apple is trying to build momentum for its Private Cloud Compute ( https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/ ), it makes sense to try and get ahead of anything that could enable a competitor to build something similar. I'd think OpenAI getting billions shoveled their way in future investment just to throw darts at building any kind of moat would qualify, becaus…
> I feel a bit bad that my mind also immediately connects "Gruber" to "Apple" in less-than-savory ways, but alas, that's the reputation he built for himself.
Yes this! I won't say how I've come to know, but if you have ever wondered "is this guy on the take from Apple as part of their fuckery?" - the answer is Yes.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat. Amazon might be a good analogy here. I'm old enough to remember when Amazon absorbed billions of VC money, making losses year over year. Every day there was some new article about how insane it was. There's no technical moat around online sales. And lots of companies sell online. But Amazon is still the biggest (by a long long way) (at least in the…
A couple other comments touch on the point I want to make, but I feel they don't nail it hard enough: if today you told me you had a website that was 100% technologically identical to Amazon, but you were willing to make slightly less money, you'd still have no products... as a user I'd have no reason to go there, but then without users there is no reason to sell there, so you have a circular bootstrapping issue. Tha…
Amazon (the retail business not AWS) does seem to have a pretty big moat.
For starters they have delivery down. In major cities you can get stuff delivered in hours. That is crazy and hard to replicate.
They have a huge inventory/marketplace. Basically any product is available. That is very difficult to replicate.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat. Amazon might be a good analogy here. I'm old enough to remember when Amazon absorbed billions of VC money, making losses year over year. Every day there was some new article about how insane it was. There's no technical moat around online sales. And lots of companies sell online. But Amazon is still the biggest (by a long long way) (at least in the…
> Amazon might be a good analogy here. I'm old enough to remember when Amazon absorbed billions of VC money, making losses year over year. Every day there was some new article about how insane it was. When was this true? Amazon was founded Jul 1994, and a publicly listed company by May 1997. I highly doubt Amazon absorbed billions of dollars of VC money in less than 3 years of the mid 1990s. https://dazeinfo.com/2019…
I don't know about vc money but Amazon was well known for spending all revenue into growth and, to my understanding, noone understood why. Why buy stocks of companies that don't make profit?
Nowadays, it's not unusual. Jeff Bezoz was laughed about for it. I think even on TV (some late night show in the 90s).
Edit: Jay Leno, 1999: https://www.unilad.com/film-and-tv/news/jeff-bezos-audience-...
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#166Unimaginable Sums of Money Are All You Need The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Huge Sums of Money in the Natural Sciences Unimaginable Sums of Money Considered Harmful
All we need is unreasonably effective paper titles
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#167This rings true to my ears: > There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. Thus, effectively, OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution. The revolution is real, but it’s ultimately going to be a commodity technology layer, not the foundation of a defensible proprietary moat. In 1995 investors mistakenly…
There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat. Amazon might be a good analogy here. I'm old enough to remember when Amazon absorbed billions of VC money, making losses year over year. Every day there was some new article about how insane it was. There's no technical moat around online sales. And lots of companies sell online. But Amazon is still the biggest (by a long long way) (at least in the…
> There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat.
Gruber writes:
" My take on OpenAI is that both of the following are true:
OpenAI currently offers, by far, the best product experience of any AI chatbot assistant. There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. "
It's amusing to me that he seems to think that OpenAI (or xAI or DeepSeek or DeepMind) is in the business of building "chatbots".
The prize is the ability to manufacture intelligence.
How much risk investors are willing to undertake for this prize is evident from their investments, after all, these investors all lived through prior business cycles and bubbles and have the institutional knowledge to know what they're getting into, financially.
How much would you invest for a given probability that the company you invest in will be able to manufacture intelligence at scale in 10 years?
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#168>> OpenAI currently offers, by far, the best product experience of any AI chatbot assistant.
Claude is noticeably better
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
A couple other comments touch on the point I want to make, but I feel they don't nail it hard enough: if today you told me you had a website that was 100% technologically identical to Amazon, but you were willing to make slightly less money, you'd still have no products... as a user I'd have no reason to go there, but then without users there is no reason to sell there, so you have a circular bootstrapping issue. Tha…
Look at Android vs Apple phones in the US. HN tends to really underestimate the impact of branding and product experience. It’s hard to argue anyone’s close to OpenAI on that front (currently). Not to mention they’ve created a pretty formidable enterprise sales function. That’s the real money maker long term and outside of Google, it’s hard to imagine any of the current players outcompeting OpenAI.
Dropbox and Slack are examples of another possible outcome: capture the early adopters and stay a player in the space, but still have your lunch eaten by big tech suites that ship similar products.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the early days of Google, people believed there could be absolutely no moat in search because competition was just "one click away" and even Google believed this and deeply internalized this into their culture of technological dominance as the only path to survival. At the beginning of ride sharing, people believed there was absolutely no geographical moat and all riders were just one cheaper ride from switching s…
It is really unbelievable how much money companies will spend to avoid talking to and thoroughly understanding their users. OpenAI could probably learn a lot from interviewing 200 random people every 6 months and seeing what they use and why, but my guess is they would consider that frivolous.
what makes you think that they don’t?