Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#21

Post by notadoc »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

I really dislike this sort of journalism. Theranos was founded by a 19 year old too. That one didn't work out so well. Was it because the founder was so young? The board so oblivious? (a bit of both if you read the book) What does it really matter how "old" the founder is, does the business have a workable business plan? Can it be profitable? Do people pay enough money for its goods and services to return a net incom…

> I'd much prefer that the article focus on these things which helps us understand the value that they bring to the market and what makes them unique.

Me too. The era of lightweight clickbait headlines can't end soon enough.

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#22

Post by barakados »

ayw wrote: post #3

Hey everyone! I'm Alex, CEO/founder of Scale! I just wanted to chime in that we're a YC company as well (S16), and I'm thankful to the HN community for having been supportive through our whole journey.

Hi Alex! Congrats on your success so far!

What principles/rules did you stick to when growing your company that you thought helped improve the culture/profits?

Thanks again for acknowledging the Hacker Network community!

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#23

Post by rvz »

ayw wrote: post #3

Hey everyone! I'm Alex, CEO/founder of Scale! I just wanted to chime in that we're a YC company as well (S16), and I'm thankful to the HN community for having been supportive through our whole journey.

Congratulations on your fast growth! It is always great to see examples of companies like yours actually solving real-world problems in AI with original ideas and obtaining large clients that rely on your work.

I'm really looking forward to more of what Scale will do in the future!

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#24

Post by aspiringfoundr »

ayw wrote: post #12
pkaye wrote: post #9

> It’s built a set of software tools that take a first pass at marking up pictures before handing them off to a network of some 30,000 contract workers, who then perform the finishing touches. Machine learning indeed.

To be clear, there is real machine learning that makes the labeling more efficient. You can see some videos of what this looks like in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/BW/status/1158407524216909826

hey @ayw. your story is really inspiring! I am currently studying full stack web development via online courses as I have few startup ideas that I want to work on that I believe to be promising. Is there any Machine learning course you specifically recommend taking in order to come up to speed with the AI technology and also if you could share some tips on becoming a first time founder especially getting the funding from a silicon valley VC as in what do they really look for when investing in a startup started by someone with no prior startup experience then that would be really great! Thanks ahead of time!

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#25

Post by kareemsabri »

Bit of an AI novice here, I did Norvig's course a few years ago and never worked in the field, but how can a machine take a "first pass" at labelling without being trained? What information is it using to apply labels to the first set of data? How does this approach differ from a conventional classifier? Would the initial guesses essentially be random?

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#26

Post by DenisM »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

I really dislike this sort of journalism. Theranos was founded by a 19 year old too. That one didn't work out so well. Was it because the founder was so young? The board so oblivious? (a bit of both if you read the book) What does it really matter how "old" the founder is, does the business have a workable business plan? Can it be profitable? Do people pay enough money for its goods and services to return a net incom…

Startup business is show business, hence obsession with youthfulness and cheap drama.

Customers flock to fame, press and investors do as well - they “know” where the customers will be so they go there, increasing the chances of success in a positive feedback loop. That’s how show business works.

San Francisco is the new Hollywood, basically.

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#29

Post by ayw »

rvz wrote: post #23
ayw wrote: post #3

Hey everyone! I'm Alex, CEO/founder of Scale! I just wanted to chime in that we're a YC company as well (S16), and I'm thankful to the HN community for having been supportive through our whole journey.

Congratulations on your fast growth! It is always great to see examples of companies like yours actually solving real-world problems in AI with original ideas and obtaining large clients that rely on your work. I'm really looking forward to more of what Scale will do in the future!

Thank you! We have some exciting stuff cooking that we can’t wait to share with everyone.

In the meantime, check out our open source datasets:

https://scale.com/open-datasets/nuscenes https://scale.com/open-datasets/pandaset https://level5.lyft.com/dataset/

Re: Scale (YC S16) Raises $100M from Accel and Founders Fund at $1B Valuation

#30

Post by jvalencia »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

I really dislike this sort of journalism. Theranos was founded by a 19 year old too. That one didn't work out so well. Was it because the founder was so young? The board so oblivious? (a bit of both if you read the book) What does it really matter how "old" the founder is, does the business have a workable business plan? Can it be profitable? Do people pay enough money for its goods and services to return a net incom…

I think it depends. If the age is being used to promote ageism, then this is not good. If however, the age is used to encourage young people to start businesses, that's positive. So... context and tone?
Post reply on HN