Retool founder and CEO David Hsu explains his contrarian philosophy on why startups should avoid raising at inflated valuations.
Insight
Most early-stage startups die from losing motivation, not running out of money
“I think that's actually true in most startups. Actually, it's like most startups die in the early stages, not because you run out of money, but really because you run out of motivation.”
Opinion
Hsu: AI coding assistants only speed up development by 10% to 20%
“If you talk to most engineers today, like, a lot of engineers do use Copilot but if you ask them, like, how much time does Copilot save you, it's not like coding is tenx faster than before. You know, coding is maybe, like, 10% faster, maybe 20% faster, or some…”
Insight
Hsu: AI chat only boosts productivity 10-20% and won't replace employees
“The chat, again, will help you, like, 10 or 20%, but it's unlikely that you're going to replace an employee with chat. Like, you know, you're not going to be like, oh, I have a relationship manager at JPMorgan Chase, and I've replaced him with an, you know, AI…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hsu: AI workflows, not chat or agents, are the next value driver
“So we think sort of the AI workflow space is a really exciting space, and I think that is the next step in sort of delivering a lot of business value by AI. I personally don't think it's, you know, via chat or, you know, via agents quite yet, so.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Enterprise AI skepticism will surge without clear returns within a year
“I do think that based on what we are hearing from customers, if we're not seeing returns in like a year or something, there will be more skepticism. So I think there is like a it is time bound, if you will, so.”
Insight
Hsu: Most global software engineers write internal-facing code
“Most of the software engineers in the world and most of the code-written in the world actually goes towards these internal facing applications.”