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I built an AI company to save my open source project

timefold.ai

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Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project

#63

Post by matt-p »

menaerus wrote: post #60
matt-p wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in some cases it's also a great way to become very very wealthy. It entirely depends on your personality and circumstances, it's certainly not for everyone.

> Sure, but in some cases it's also a great way to become very very wealthy. In very very very few cases, sure. Also, the wealth isn't the only or at least not the biggest motivator for many people trying to build their startups. But I get it - my money my rules disguised under show me how motivated you are to carry this through.

Sure, agreed though a larger percentage of VC funded startups exit than you probably think. Those "90% fail" stats are made up mostly by people who got traditional angel investment or no investment at all.

I'm just saying there's two sides to the coin, that's all.

I think there's a very genuine element of 'show me how motivated you are' you also cannot expect to get a normal standard rate company salary when you own most of the equity and aren't profitable. I think it's reasonable on balance.

Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project

#64

Post by PeterStuer »

wisty wrote: post #22
PeterStuer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a constrained solver. You can argue about what is or is not AI. It varies over time, traditionally driven by in which part of the AI boom/ bust cycle we were, and lately also by which regulations would apply. My background is in AI but I would have been hesitant calling the rule based systems I wrote to automate financial descisions AI at the time. In this case, Geoffrey also seemed hesitant in the past to refe…

Rule based systems can fall more into the side of AI than ML.

Objectively I agree. Commercially it's a different story.

I also think AI ousting ML historically was uncalled for, and those that did should bow their heads in shame.

Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project

#65

Post by _glass »

yorak wrote: post #28

Geoffrey, thanks for sharing your story with us. OR sure is a weird niche. Good enough algorithms for solving these problems have existed for decades1, but we still see low adoption and your 95% estimate of the companies not optimizing their operations rings true. Similarly to you, I spent a short while trying to sell VRP optimization with an API business model, and what dawned on me was that most companies do not ha…

I did OR in my Bachelor thesis, and then at my first project at my first job. It worked like magic, and business was sure it wouldn't work. Still one of the projects I always talk about. It was for organizing screens unto pallets unto trucks. Then I never anything with OR ever since. Even for a few early AI products 8 years ago, in the end they didn't go for it. I think you are spot on with the expertise. Even though quite a lot of businesspeople heard about it in university.

Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project

#66

Post by menaerus »

matt-p wrote: post #63
menaerus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but in some cases it's also a great way to become very very wealthy. In very very very few cases, sure. Also, the wealth isn't the only or at least not the biggest motivator for many people trying to build their startups. But I get it - my money my rules disguised under show me how motivated you are to carry this through.

Sure, agreed though a larger percentage of VC funded startups exit than you probably think. Those "90% fail" stats are made up mostly by people who got traditional angel investment or no investment at all. I'm just saying there's two sides to the coin, that's all. I think there's a very genuine element of 'show me how motivated you are' you also cannot expect to get a normal standard rate company salary when you own…

No, that's only about the leverage - a perfect instrument to create even more pressure. Everything else I call a BS, sorry. Aren't founders already taking a huge leap by admitting themselves to work probably as much as ~10x more, with of course reciprocal amount of stress, and then you say it's reasonable that founders wouldn't be motivated enough unless they did all of that but for under the market rate? They left their job, they have the idea, they have the people, they have the drive ... and they want to execute it. I just hope not all investments work this way - this would be really sad.

Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project

#69

Post by BossingAround »

Honestly, I'm still not sure how I feel about Red Hat/IBM's journey. On one hand, RH killed (i.e. "gave to IBM to rot away") a lot of products I liked (recently, the whole JBoss stack they had, see [1] for more details).

On the other hand, a lot of the products that RH gave to IBM were really painful to use. Let me preface this by saying that I mean no disrespect to Geoffrey and his amazing work! And, also, I suspected I was too dumb to understand OptaPlanner in particular.

But OptaPlanner was definitely amazingly painful to use. The docs seemed horrible to me at the time, and the UX of the product was on the level of "the source code is there, to solve your problem, just understand the code base..." To model your problems meant that ideally, you'd pay for Red Hat's consulting, which would give you indirect access to the dev team, which would help you put your problem model into OptaPlanner.

A lot of the JBoss products I really liked were like that. Now, they'll die by slow death over at IBM with nobody giving a damn. I guess such is life.

I wish Geoffrey all the best with Timefold! I truly hope you'll turn it into whatever you desire, and that you'll always have more customers knocking at your door than you can handle!

[1] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/evolving-our-middleware-strat...

Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project

#70

Post by rcxdude »

menaerus wrote: post #42
ge0ffrey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you make the leap, you're basically living of off your savings. Until the startup has investors that agree to pay the founders a wage (to reduce personal financial stress so they can concentrate on the company) - or the startup is profitable - it's vital that your savings don't run out...

Are there investors who wouldn't agree to pay the founders a wage? I understand the part where you invest your time and money to build the PoC but I can't imagine running a startup with VC-backed investment without paying out myself a wage. That seems crazy to me if true.

Equity is compensation, just illiquid, risky compensation. If you're wanting to get a wage (liquid, low-risk compensation) as well, expect to trade it against equity (which will naturally happen: if you're a founder being paid a wage, you're being paid it with the VC money which you have gotten by giving them some of your equity for some small fraction of what you expect the equity to be worth if you succeed). If you believe in the company (or at least rate the chances of success as more than the VCs do), it's rational to minimise the amount you trade away in equity for short-term needs or risk-reduction.
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