ChatGPT's response to "can you summarize this in lay terms":
In studies of the "RNA world," a theoretical early stage in the origin of life where RNA molecules played a crucial role, researchers have observed that parasitism is a common phenomenon. This means that some molecules can exploit others for their own benefit, which could lead to the extinction of those being exploited unless certain protective measures are in place, such as separating the molecules into compartments or arranging them in specific patterns.
By thinking of RNA replication as a kind of active process, similar to a computer running a program, researchers can explore various strategies that RNA might use to adapt to challenges in its environment. The study uses computer models to investigate how parasitism emerges and how complexity develops in response.
Initially, the system starts with a designed RNA molecule that can copy itself and occasionally makes small mistakes (mutations) during this process. Very quickly, shorter RNA molecules that act as parasites appear. These parasites are copied more rapidly because of their shorter length, giving them an advantage. In response, the original replicating molecules also become shorter to speed up their own replication. They develop ways to slow down the copying process, which helps reduce the advantage parasites have.
Over time, the replicating molecules also evolve more complex methods to distinguish between their own copies and the parasites. This complexity grows as new parasite species keep arising, not from evolving existing parasites, but from mutations in the replicating molecules themselves.
The process of evolution changes as well, with increases in mutation rates and the emergence of new mutation processes. As a result, parasitism not only drives the evolution of more complex replicators but also leads to the development of complex ecosystems. In summary, the study shows how parasitism can be a powerful force that promotes complexity and diversity in evolving systems.
Still feels way off. If VCs receive 1-5 pitches per week that seem as exciting to them as OpenAI, they'd spread their money around a lot more startups. Don't think they're that excited by half the "solid metrics, good founders, there's plenty of money in generic B2B SaaS if we throw enough at the sales team" stuff they actually invest in.
Now I can believe that at least 10% of the pitchdecks they receive are "we hook $industry up to OpenAI's API"...
- Volume: Former founders who hit the jackpot are investing in a bunch of startups every week. There are hundreds of unicorns etc out there, and thousands of Series A's every year. That's a bunch of competitive deals being signed every day!
- Quality: Early silicon valley startups can easily look like openai's early days. With hundreds of unicorns out there, their execs eventually leaving and recruiting smart folks for their next thing happens almost every day. Pitches that are "We're solving X" are a dime a dozen. Likewise, they're each flawed in different ways -- in OpenAI's case, an easy negative phrasing is: no real business plan, positioned mostly as a non-profit R&D lab that'd do open source for Elon Musk to get google IP more easily. Likewise, having Stripe's CTO was one of those cool unicorn exec things, but for 0->1 business, maybe not so obvious, and Sam Altman's only 0->1 gig was running a small failed social mobile social network. It's easy to phrase in positive vs negative lights. Now imagine getting 5 of those on your desk every week, and you only pick 0-3 a year, hoping each win pays for all the duds, and then some...
Please keep this attitude on the track, and away from where people live.
Ripping your engine in loud cities, no matter how great you think it sounds, is like urinating on the toilet seat or throwing your trash out the window. Might make your life a little easier or better, but it's just flagrantly inconsiderate.
Chroma is awesome <3 - We have some overlap with them as we store the embeddings. But, we provide additional operations on top of the data, such as clustering/fine-tuning. We're also looking into open-sourcing some tools in the near future!
Postgres has an extension as well (pgvector). I've been using it, great performance, great scaling options (though I'm not even close to testing the limits) and gives you the full flexibility of Postgres.
It's easy enough to define a docker compose file, and deploy it to my environments.
I’ve done quite a bit of work in and around venture studios and without knowing who you are I’d suggest:
-Do you think you can attract world class founders to work on them? Do you have the credibility to do so? (See the heuristics blank suggests in the OP link)
-Can you provide sufficient capital in one of the worst environments for fundraising in recent memory?
If the answer is yes to both of these, go for it!
I think the failure mode for studios is “moderately successful person with moderate conviction in a bunch of ideas brings good-not-great people in to build them. Lot of motion, no progress”
Whatever you do, it should be intense and excellent. If you feel like you can do that, the world needs a lot more good companies!
Many thanks for this great answer. It hits on some of what I've been thinking over but raises other important considerations.
Re your questions, the best answer is maybe - I'll only really know when I get more public about it, which I plan to do soon, but I have some promising signals. I'm well aware funding is a major issue at the moment, but some or maybe all the concepts are very relevant to "current things", and I'm happy to focus on what I can get funded in the short term and put the other concepts on the backburner till later.
FWIW, I have a lot of conviction about all the ideas I have in mind - hence having already put a lot of time/money/learning into them over several years wanting to work on all of them rather than just one.
I'd love to connect if you're interested to know more, share any more detailed input, perhaps be involved in some way.
My email is in my bio and I can easily be found on LinkedIn, so feel free to get in touch.
I don't think this comes without a long term cost. Among other things, some studies with pretty sound methodology have shown that people are very bad at self-estimating their own impairment from sleep-deprivation. It's likely worse than you think it is.
I'd encourage you to move if you can afford to, or to invest in a white noise machine and ear plugs that are comfortable to sleep in. Mack's wax ear plugs have made a huge change for me.
I've been watching this team for over a year and have been consistently impressed by how fast they're iterating, how thoughtful they are about this problem, and the care they put into doing it right. Rooting for this company!
Reading the back-and-forth, the takeaway for me was just how much pure guesswork - on both sides - went into the estimates. It's not just the professor's arguments that are easy to poke holes in, it's every single valuation you can think of for Uber. Here are three scenarios, for example, where Uber value trends toward zero:
Google brings self-driving cars to market. Instead of owning a car, a fleet of autonomous vehicles drive around and pick up any passenger who requests it. No drivers are necessary, the app is built into the Android OS, and all the logistics are handled by Google Maps.
Workable telepresence solutions are developed, relying on combinations of e-mail, web applications, GitHub, videoconference, and some yet-to-be-invented virtual presence system (holodecks? Oculus Rift?). Instead of requiring that you be in a physical office, all knowledge workers can telecommute from wherever they live, and their "office" exists only in virtual reality. Seeking cheaper real estate, larger houses, and yards, workers leave cities in droves. Socializing happens in virtual worlds, and all those trips that Ubers are currently necessary for never happen.
The taxi union lobbies hard and gets Uber and similar ride-sharing services declared illegal in all major cities.
And that's discounting the truly black-swan events like "World War 3 breaks out, and we're all wiped out by nuclear winter."
It really drives home how the market value of a company is set by the last person to buy a share of that company, no matter how crazy or irrational his beliefs are. I could momentarily drop the market cap of Google to $6.75M by selling a share at $0.01, but presumably the market would correct itself in a millisecond. In thinly-traded private stocks, this market correction mechanism is not always available, and so valuations can be way off the mark until all the assumptions built into those valuations have become public and been judged as likely or not likely by the market.
Not read the Tesla piece but at least with the Uber piece the assumptions were clearly stated so they can be challenged.
One challenge I would make to this article's assumptions is that the world is like San Francisco. In many places there are already cheap private hire options available[0]. I'm not sure how to calculate for the existing cost and availability of such options. If it makes sense for the drivers they may become Uber drivers but there may be less decrease in car ownership and changes in customer behaviour.
To add to that, what about those cities where you have also a good public transport in place like NYC, Lodon, Paris, Berlin and many more? Where it is may be comfortable to use such a service, but also more expansive and more slower (because of traffic jam).
London not only have good public transport and horribly slow/congested roads in the centre. We also have cheap minicabs, Hailo, and at least one "Uber-like" that contracts minicab companies rather than individual drivers. And many of the larger minicab fleets seems fairly similar to Uber in the way they operate as well.
(We also have rickshaws; mostly as a tourist novelty, though)
Doesn't mean they can't do well here too, but certainly a different proposition to one where they only competes against normal taxis.
Yeah, but tesla as a car company is overvalued right now and was then, and last year that's all it was or looked to ever be.
This article is refuting the market for the product; I don't think anyone believes the market for electric vehicles is significantly larger than the current automotive market.
The issue with using a DCF based approach, is that you have to bet only a single scenario whereas if you take a decision tree/probability based model, you can account for a range of scenarios. Here is Charlie Munger on Warren Buffet:
One of the advantages of a fellow like Buffett, whom I've worked with all these years, is that he automatically thinks in terms of decision trees and the elementary math of permutations and combinations....
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Here is a probability model vs DCF based model. Goldman uses a probability based model which can be used to evaluate changing shifts in technology such as Tesla's Autonomous technology
In studies of the "RNA world," a theoretical early stage in the origin of life where RNA molecules played a crucial role, researchers have observed that parasitism is a common phenomenon. This means that some molecules can exploit others for their own benefit, which could lead to the extinction of those being exploited unless certain protective measures are in place, such as separating the molecules into compartments or arranging them in specific patterns.
By thinking of RNA replication as a kind of active process, similar to a computer running a program, researchers can explore various strategies that RNA might use to adapt to challenges in its environment. The study uses computer models to investigate how parasitism emerges and how complexity develops in response.
Initially, the system starts with a designed RNA molecule that can copy itself and occasionally makes small mistakes (mutations) during this process. Very quickly, shorter RNA molecules that act as parasites appear. These parasites are copied more rapidly because of their shorter length, giving them an advantage. In response, the original replicating molecules also become shorter to speed up their own replication. They develop ways to slow down the copying process, which helps reduce the advantage parasites have.
Over time, the replicating molecules also evolve more complex methods to distinguish between their own copies and the parasites. This complexity grows as new parasite species keep arising, not from evolving existing parasites, but from mutations in the replicating molecules themselves.
The process of evolution changes as well, with increases in mutation rates and the emergence of new mutation processes. As a result, parasitism not only drives the evolution of more complex replicators but also leads to the development of complex ecosystems. In summary, the study shows how parasitism can be a powerful force that promotes complexity and diversity in evolving systems.