20VC: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of OpenAI, Are LLMs Being Commoditised, Where Does the Value Lie; Infrastructure or Application Layer, How Apple Could Win in a World of AI, How Amazon Could Threaten OpenAI and Why Google Struggle with Des Trayn

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2023

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Today Des leads all Intercom’s R&D efforts, and parts of Intercom’s marketing.

In Today's Episode with Des We Discuss:

1. From Consultancy to Founding a Unicorn:

What was the founding a-ha moment for Des and the team with Intercom?
Why does Des believe that most startup advice is BS and outdated in 5 years?
What does Des know now that he wishes he had known when he started?

2. LLMs: The World is Not Equal:

What does Des mean when he says the world of LLMs is not equal?
How do the different LLMs very in quality, price and speciality?
Does Des agree with Alex @ Nabla, "the best companies in the future will work with many LLMs at the same time and switch between them for different things"?
To what extent does Des believe LLMs will be commoditised and it will be a race to the bottom?
Would Des be a buyer of OpenAI at a $90BN price? Why not?

3. How to Survive in a World of OpenAI:

What two simple questions will determine if Open AI will kill your existing business?
What 3 criteria will determine if there is a new business to be built on top of OpenAI?
What is the different between a thin layer on top of an LLM and a thick wrapper with real value?
Which traditional incumbents are most vulnerable? What should they do in this new world?
How long does it take for incumbents to really be impacted?

4. The Titans of Tech: Who Wins:

Why does Des believe that Apple could be a massive winner in the next wave of AI?
Why does Des believe that Google have not been impressive and failed to keep pace?
Why does Des think OpenAI should be wary of Amazon? What could they do to threaten them?
What opportunity does Facebook have here? How could Instagram and Whatsapp win?

5. Startup and Investing 101:

Why does Des believe that every founder should write a blog post per week?
Why does Des believe that most B2B marketing sucks? What makes great B2B marketing?
What are Des' biggest lessons from the Hopin journey?
How has Des' angel investing changed in the last year with the rise of AI?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Right now, a lot of values going straight into the
0:02.1	universe, like as in we're handing it all at the back door
0:04.0	to open AI. And we actually torture
0:06.0	test all of the LLMs. It's not yet the case
0:08.1	that they're all equal. I'd be wary
0:10.1	of Amazon. So like, I could
0:12.1	see Amazon just flat up like buying Anthropic
0:14.3	and being like, let's just make this part of the
0:16.0	EC2 cluster. I think Apple will make
0:17.9	massive, massive strides forward with AI. I feel like Bard unfortunately
0:22.5	felt like we had to release this because chat GPT was getting a lot of traction. They need to have
0:26.4	that Jay-Z like allow me to reintroduce myself moment. This is 20VC The Memo with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:32.3	Now 20VC the memo is the monthly show where we deep dive on one specific topic and today, you guessed
0:37.4	it, AI.
0:38.5	The state of LLMs, which incumbents win, how startups and incumbents survive when open AI does what it does, and so much more.
0:46.3	This is one of the best shows we've done in a long, long time.
0:48.9	So I'm going to keep this short.
0:50.2	Joining us as Des trainer, co-founder at Intercom. He's also an active angel investor, and I think he's one of the smartest and most thoughtful and strategic people in this ecosystem.
0:58.8	But before we dive into the show today, we need to talk about SANA.
1:02.4	SANA is an AI-powered learning and knowledge-sharing platform.
1:05.9	Think of it like ChatGPT for all your company's knowledge.
1:09.3	Sana integrates with all your company's apps in under five minutes and can search through
	...

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