CapitalG’s Post

So the ilk of the high-profile are falling over themselves to support Sam Altman. After he was fired by the OpenAI board for being (as the board claims) less than honest in his conversations with said board, the outpouring of support has been palpable. But what value does Altman bring to AI? He's not an engineer, he's not an Elon of the AI world; I'm curious if he can even put together a valuable ChatAI "prompt" that would showcase a great "completion." Maybe he's just a super nice guy. Well, Altman has money, but even more important, he brings a massive network into whatever he does. He's been a partner in YCombinator, which has not necessarily shown any acumen for funding successful companies beyond all successful companies being funded because they're plugged into the network of the rich and powerful. You know, like Sam Bankman Fried (not YC funded, but probably everyone at YC knows his family). YC has invested in AirBnB, Stripe, and other successful companies, but most Harvard grads looking to use their parents' network to fund "something to do after college" have actually failed while in YC's portfolio. And these have been some insanely stupid ideas, yes still funded by YC. So, back to why Altman was fired, what if network is more important than honesty? Unfortunately, that's how the sausage is made when there's so much money involved. TLDR? Great ideas, even those that have been executed to show their value, are nothing without the generational money, and the Ivy and political networks to support these ideas. But so are really shitty ideas. Jettison the better human qualities (like honesty); in the end, they're baggage.

Fed announcements made early-stage tech startups sick, but some valid market shifts are happening. 1. Focus has moved.  Topline (GMV, Revenue, Net Revenue, etc.) is irrelevant.  Bottomline (Unit economics, P/E ratio, etc.) is king. 2. Public/private governance chasm has shrunk.  "Old-school" governance mechanisms in public markets are new gold standards in private markets. 3. Visionaries with metal to execute are winners You can leave AI to do your fancy deck. People with rolled-up sleeves are winners. #marketshift #startuptrends #sustainablebusiness #valueinvesting

✨ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝗡𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 | 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜’𝘀 𝗙𝗧 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽, 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁’𝘀 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆, 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 In this week's Stableton Navigator, we cover OpenAI's new deal with the Financial Times, part of their strategy to team up with top data sources. We also delve into significant portfolio news such as Revolut's planned hiring spree and media strategy, suggesting strong growth. We examine Rubrik's successful IPO, underscoring an active market and robust investor interest. Join us for more on the key trends shaping the investment world. 📧 Sign up to receive the weekly newsletter via the link in comments! https://lnkd.in/gX2Cjrsu

It’s an exciting day at Chalk. Today we are announcing our $10m seed led by General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Xfund. This is not my first attempt at solving this problem. I first built the bones of Chalk back at Affirm, where we were leveraging machine learning to tackle fraud. At Affirm, fraudsters employed increasingly sophisticated attacks like porting out phone numbers to defeat SMS 2FA, which required new sources of data such as information about recent phone ports. Stopping fraud at Affirm often led to pulling and pumping in more data, not actually iterating on the model. We built a system that looks much like the Chalk, and is still in use today. This helped us move more quickly, test out changes with confidence, and ship product-grade machine learning. Partnering up with Andrew and Marc in 2022 to turn these learnings into a real business just made sense. We didn’t want to just create a platform that powered complex machine learning, we wanted to create the platform that empowered the developers who build it. We wanted to make a platform that data engineering and data science teams loved to use. Our team is partnered with companies tackling some of the hardest problems out there. With incredible customers such as Ramp, Melio, Whatnot, Vital, and more under our belt, it’s been thrilling to see how far we’ve come at Chalk. Looking forward to what 2024 brings!

To founders in AI: listen in to Priya Saiprasad share her thoughts on how to find and attract top talent.

https://lnkd.in/dp3Jc5_u Why Kate Clark's story matters: VCs aren't dumb. Nor do they work like naive stock traders. Before readers (who might also trade stock) conclude Benchmark is buying into a deal "after the train left station", they might do better to think about Benchmark buying into a business with the credentials enterprise-class organizations look for - early track record servicing themselves and their peers, plus demonstrated success running big teams in a business, etc. So ... The GPT FOMO craze is maturing at breakneck speed - probably fastest in recent history of any tech "theme". Stay tuned ... #vcs

Our friend Luke Skertich, Principal at one of the most active VC funds globally - FJ Labs - dished out some thoughts on both Q4'23 and what he expects to see in 2024 in terms of venture funding. 2023 was an interesting dichotomy between austerity and intemperance, according to Luke, while 2024 poses an exciting year for #B2B marketplace models. Why? Find out in our VC Benchmark report 👇 https://bit.ly/3wlVncB #venturecapital #marketinsights #FriendsOfTheVentureCity

Stripes AI Revenue Up 250%, Reviewing Its Annual Letter and Trillion Dollar Transaction Volume Stripe's annual letter which is the valley's version of Berkshire's Annual Letter, its booming AI revenue, $1 Trillion in Transaction volume, robotics companies Stripes likes, Irish history, and a segment called Drug Test. Show hosts Joe (Eng VP) and Jordan (M&A Deal Lead) worked at various companies from Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce, Slack, Carts, Splunk, Wealthfront, Adobe, Microsoft, and more. 🤩Get access to new stories and blog posts for the episode and the ones we didn't have time to cover, our book recommendations, exclusive episodes and latest AI research for only $5 at buff.ly/45tK7Xo Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:48 - Stripe Co-Founder on CNBC 05:00 - Returning to Cash Flow First Startups 10:20 - How AI Augments Employees 19:30 - Review of Stripe's Annual Letter 28:30 - Stripe's Take On The Startup Market 31:30 - Stripe Atlas Vs Inc File 39:05 - How Stripe Ensures API Reliability 47:03 - How Ebay Ruined Paypal & Ignored Elon Musk And Elon Musk 44:15 - The Frame Of Mind And The Industrial Revolution 51:39 - How Stripe Has Insider Info On Potential Unicorn Startups 53:33 - Robotics Companies Stripe Likes 57:20 - Stripes Series I Fundraise 58:50 - St.Patrick's Day Irish History 1:00:00 - Drug Test Segment - Baba Vlogs #stripe #ai #openai #economy #technology #investing #startups https://buff.ly/3Vnk5ns