20VC: AI's Biggest Questions: The Commoditisation of LLMs, Open vs Closed: Who Wins, Model Size vs Data Quality, Why Google are Vulnerable and Apple are the Dark Horse
Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support.
Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science.
Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential.
Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digits, building the future of AI-powered accounting. Digits have raised funding from the likes of Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and 20VC.
Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages.
Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses.
Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation.
Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Before that, Richard was the CEO/CTO of AI startup MetaMind, acquired by Salesforce in 2016.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
Foundational Models: Analysis
Will foundational models become commoditized?
Who are the major players? What are their different strengths?
Who will win? Who will lose?
How important is the size of the model vs the quality of the data?
2. Open vs Closed:
What are the biggest pros and cons of an open ecosystem for LLMs?
Why is it naive to think that open-source LLMs will prevail?
What will determine which method wins?
3. An Analysis of the Incumbents:
Why is Google the most vulnerable? What can they do to regain ground?
Why is Apple the sleeping giant? How could they win the next wave of AI?
What should Amazon do today to compete with Microsoft?
4. The Future: Doom and Gloom?
Why is it ridiculous to assume AI systems want to dominate?
Why will AI create a renaissance of creativity and human freedom?
What role should regulation play in the advancement and progression of AI?
20VC: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play, Why Apple Will Win in an AI World, Why Google is the Most Vulnerable Incumbent, Will LLMs Be Commoditised, Which Startups Are Thin vs Thick Wrappers on Top of LLMs with Jeff Seibert, Founder @ Digits
Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digits, building the future of AI-powered accounting. Digits have raised funding from the likes of Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and 20VC. Jeff previously served as Twitter's Head of Consumer Product, a position he came to following the acquisition of his prior company, Crashlytics. Today, Crashlytics is the de-facto mobile crash reporting solution for iOS and Android and runs on over 6 Billion monthly active smartphones worldwide.
In Today's Episode with Jeff Seibert We Discuss:
1. The Art of the Pivot:
What are Jeff's biggest pieces of advice to founders pivoting?
How do you know when you have enough data to make the decision to pivot?
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when pivoting?
2. AI: Who Wins and Who Loses:
Why does Jeff believe that OpenAI will transition into an infrastructure play?
What are the most significant challenges OpenAI will face moving forward?
Why does Jeff believe that Apple are best positioned to win in an AI world?
Why does Jeff believe that Google are the most vulnerable incumbent?
What would Jeff do if he was CEO of Google?
3. LLMs: What Happens Now:
Will we see the commoditization of LLMs?
What are the biggest misconceptions people have on training and fine-tuning LLMs?
Will we see LLMs increasingly specialise to vertical-specific models or will they remain horizontal?
What is the difference between a thick and a thin wrapper when building on top of LLMs?
4. Angel Portfolio in Review:
How many angel checks has Jeff written? How many failed? How many home runs?
Does Jeff believe that company valuations are being kept artificially high?
How did Jeff make 200x selling through the secondary market for a now failing company?
What are Jeff's three biggest pieces of advice for angels today?
20VC: Framework For Hiring The Best Talent 100% Remotely, Raising $32M From Benchmark and GV Pre-Launch and How To Think Through Capital Efficiency and Runway Today with Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang, Co-Founders @ Digits
Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert are the co-founders @ Digits, the company that gives you a complete, real-time understanding of your expenses, all in just a few clicks. To date, Wayne and Jeff have raised over $32M for Digits from some of the best in the business including Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and Jess Verrilli @ GV and then with the most incredible base of angels with the founders from Box, Github, Stitch Fix, Tinder, Gusto and more. Prior to Digits, Wayne and Jeff co-founded Crashlytics, acquired by Twitter for a 9-figure sum in Jan 2013 and then acquired from Twitter by Google in 2017. If that was not enough they are also LPs in some of the world's most exclusive funds and angels in the likes of Gusto, OpenDoor and SoFi to name a few.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Jeff and Wayne make their way into the world of tech and startups? How did Wayne crashing a startup dinner start everything for them?
2.) How did Jeff and Wayne's prior success with Crashlytics impact their operating mindset scaling Digits today? What worked? What did not work? What gets easier with time? What gets harder the second time around?
3.) What have been Wayne and Jeff's biggest lessons from having a remote team from Day 1? What structure and framework do they use to hire the best remote talent? How does that change at the exec level? How do they think about optimising product management for remote teams?
4.) How would Wayne and Jeff summarise their design philosophy with Digits? Why does Wayne believe "minimalism only favours the designer"? When does it make sense to actually add some complexity to your product?
5.) Digits raised $33M pre-launch, why did they favour this approach? How do they think about when to transition from lean and iterative to aggressive and pouring fuel on the fire? Why did they choose to work with Peter Fenton? How do they think about optimising their angel network?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Wayne's Fave Book: Enders Game
Jeff's Fave Book: Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
20 VC FF 032: Jeff Seibert on Lessons From Being Acquired By Twitter & Box and Now Leading Twitter's Consumer Product
Jeff Seibert is an experienced serial-entrepreneur and currently Senior Director of Product at Twitter. Previously, Seibert was the CEO of Crashlytics, which he co-founded in 2011 with Wayne Chang. Crashlytics delivered crash analysis tools for iOS and Android apps via an SDK that reached 300 Million mobile devices worldwide. Crashlytics was acquired by Twitter in 2013 for $259m. In 2007, Seibert co-founded Increo and served as its COO and lead architect until its acquisition by Box in August of 2009. He subsequently oversaw the integration of Increo’s document preview and annotation technologies into the company's cloud-based content platform.
A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jeff made his move into the wonderful world of tech?
Today we are going to break up your story into 3 chapters:
1.) Acquisition by Box:
What was it like going to Sand Hill Road to raise in 2009?
How much runway would Jeff advise for a startup and how can companies know whether a strategic acquisition is optimal or whether they should continue building with a further round?
Jeff has spoke before about being overly transparent with this team about the acquisition. What are the problems with being overly transparent and how can you balance the two?
2.) Acquired by Twitter:
At what point did Jeff transition to thinking the acquisition by Twitter would be a beneficial and viable and why?
A reason for Jeff being favourable to the acquisition was Twitter's agreement of continued investment in the space. How can founders negotiate and ensure that this occurs with their acquisition? One of the mistakes stated about the acquisition by Twitter was the reporting structure. How can founders ensure that they are speaking to the VPs of engineering, CEOs etc and attain the support they need?
3.) Life at Twitter:
How life is following the acquisition? What are Jeff's plans for the future as Senior Director of Product at Twitter?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jeff' Fave Book: How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Jeff's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Daring Fireball As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jeff on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!
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