Seibert: Investors should avoid asking motivated founders for cash back
Jeff Seibert · Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Nov 22, 2023 · at 49:41
Jeff Seibert, founder of Digits and former Twitter Head of Consumer Product, discusses whether venture capitalists should ask struggling startups to return unspent capital.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I, so I am biased obviously by the founder side, but I think it's very scenario dependent. So if the founder is still like excited, the team is there, they have grit. Like, I don't think you can ask for cash back. I think like, You want to bet on the founder? Like, let's see where it goes. If the founder is clearly wavering, if there's performance concerns, if there's been a pattern of bad decisions, then maybe there's a clear scenario and case for it. But in general, I would bias towards supporting the founder.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jeff Seibert
Seibert: AI will be commoditized quickly without disrupting existing software pricing
“So this may be just me, but I very much see AI as a tool, not a product. And so it's a technology. It's like your database. It's like Memcash back in the day, and so because of that, I don't think it'll change how people price in specific industries. Like, if …”
Seibert: On-device Apple LLMs could make OpenAI obsolete within five years
“I bet Apple can and will. And so if you project forward five years, if they get to the point where they can run a sufficiently large LLM on your iPhone, then OpenAI is out of the picture. You don't even need to hit their servers. It's just on your phone.”
Seibert predicts runaway climate change is less than ten years away
“Runaway climate change is less than 10 years out.”
Seibert: AI will boost productivity rather than replace human jobs
“Ah, so I would say actually, on a good light, AI won't replace many jobs, I think, actually. It'll drive productivity, not replacement, and it'll be like other technologies that have come out, like phones didn't replace people, now you just use them and you ca…”
Seibert: Foundational AI models will inevitably be commoditized
“I certainly think we will, and this may not be a popular position, Obviously, opening eyes, charging ahead, sort of leading the way right now. I think the market forces at work mean there's just immense energy to have an open source equivalent. Meta appears to…”
Seibert: On-device iPhone LLMs will make OpenAI obsolete within five years
“I bet Apple can and will, and so if you project forward five years, if they get to the point where they can run a sufficiently large LLM on your iPhone, then OpenAI is out of the picture. Don't even need to hit their servers. It's just on your phone.”