Nov 10, 2023 · 54m · more-or-less
#22: Your GPT Will Make More Money Than Your Substack? Please Tell Us More… · More or Less Podcast
Sam Lessin · 18m spoken Jessica Lessin · 11m spoken Dave Morin · 10m spoken Brit Morin · 8m spoken Podcast Intro Singer · 14s spoken
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the More or Less podcast, Dave Morin, Sam Lessin, Jessica Lessin, and Brit Morin evaluate OpenAI's Developer Day, exploring the commercial viability of custom GPTs and platform competition. They also debate the permanently closed tech IPO window, multimodal AI applications in sports and betting, and the need for new venture capital financing structures.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.8 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 3.9 The hosts pushing back 3.6
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 44:02 Sam Tears Down Duolingo's Performance
Sam forcefully rejects Brit's premise that Duolingo is a winning mid-cap model, citing its $50 million loss in 2022, lack of gains since its IPO, and vulnerability to AI translation.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 28:06 Dave Defends Early Platform UtilitiesWhen Sam disparages the newly announced GPT store apps as mere 'fart apps', Dave immediately counters by noting both the Facebook platform and the iPhone App Store originated with lighters and novelty apps.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 22:20 Explaining Vector Search MechanicsSam and Dave detail the architectural reality of retrieval-augmented generation, explaining how vector databases filter large document sets into model context windows.
The host holds their own ▶ 43:23 Brit Challenges Mega-Cap Monopoly ThesisBrit counters Sam's sweeping assertion that public market tech demand has permanently dried up by citing Duolingo's rally from $96 to $167 and a $7 billion valuation.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animated Title Sequence and Theme Song | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Light introductory banter about skiing documentaries. Sam playfully challenges the quality of Warren Miller films while Dave defends their historical significance. | |
| Seinfeld's Stand-Up, Phone Habits, and Concert Presence | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Discussion centered on Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up set and concert phone etiquette, with Dave defending capturing photos while Brit teases him. | |
| 'The Morning Show' Finale and Tech Satire | 4 | 2 | 4 | 3 | Jessica and Dave praise 'The Morning Show' finale while Sam dismisses the show entirely and mocks Jon Hamm's Elon Musk-inspired character. | |
| OpenAI DevDay Reactions and Empowering Micro-Entrepreneurs | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Sam celebrates being validated about AI wrappers getting wiped out, while Dave and Brit redirect the focus toward micro-entrepreneurs and non-technical founders utilizing GPT builders. | |
| The Economics of Custom GPTs: Content Monetization and Bot Utility | 6 | 3 | 4 | 4 | The panel debates the commercial viability of custom GPT bots. Sam questions user willingness to pay for conversational repackaging of books and content archives, while Jessica outlines enterprise media use cases. | |
| Assistants API, Context Windows, and Retrieval Architecture | 8 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Dave and Sam demonstrate deep technical knowledge regarding OpenAI's Assistants API, retrieval architectures, and vector embeddings versus the limitations of 128k context windows. | |
| Threat to Google Search: Bard vs. ChatGPT in the Boardroom | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Brit shares her experience utilizing Google Bard to analyze metrics during board meetings, prompting Sam to joke about her being a fair-weather tech fan. | |
| Platform Evolution: 'Fart Apps', API Pricing, and Enterprise Reality | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 | Sam labels the initial wave of custom GPTs as trivial 'fart apps', but Dave forcefully pushes back by pointing out that both the iPhone App Store and Facebook platform began with frivolous utilities. | |
| Elon Musk's xAI, Twitter Data, and Vision-Powered Sports Commentary | 5 | 2 | 3 | 2 | Discussion of Elon Musk's xAI trained on Twitter corpus, followed by Dave highlighting real-time sports vision analysis using GPT-4 Vision. | |
| The Future of Sports Betting, AI Coaching, and Casino Integrity | 7 | 4 | 5 | 4 | Sam argues AI models analyzing video feeds will ruin sports betting just like algorithmic high-frequency trading transformed Wall Street. Brit questions the impact on physical casinos. | |
| Debating the Tech IPO Window and Mega-Cap Dominance | 7 | 4 | 7 | 5 | Brit reports investment bankers are advising tech firms to eye Spring 2024 for IPOs. Sam flatly dismisses the prospect, arguing public markets will favor mega-caps over subscale tech for the foreseeable future. | |
| Analyzing Duolingo and the Reality of Mid-Cap Tech | 7 | 5 | 7 | 6 | Brit presents Duolingo as an example of an outperforming mid-cap tech stock. Sam immediately counters with financial specifics, noting it lost $50M in 2022, remains flat from its IPO, and faces existential AI translation risks. | |
| Rethinking Venture Capital Contracts and Funding Small Businesses | 8 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Dave raises an LP inquiry regarding standard Silicon Valley venture contracts. Sam articulates why standardization occurred for financial scaling and explains alternative financing models tailored for cash-flow businesses. | |
| Breaking News: Snap PM Layoffs and Founder Mode | 5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | Jessica shares breaking reporting regarding Snap letting go of 20 product managers, triggering a quick contrarian quip from Sam on corporate efficiency. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Sam Lessin: Being an AI startup is a bad idea
“OpenAI has now swiped all these AI startups for sure, and being an AI startup is a bad idea, which has been my line for a while.”
Morin: OpenAI DevDay is the best launch since Facebook Platform
“But I think that you also have to give OpenAI serious credit for being in just absolute beast mode right now. Like this is one of, I think the most impressive developer platform launches. Since maybe Facebook platform, if I do say so myself.”
Lessin: People will not want to consume news through chatbots
“Do I think it's how people are going to want to consume their news? No”
Sam Lessin: Ease of building software does not make it compelling
“The fact that this thing is easy to make is not, in and of itself, make it a compelling product.”
Lessin: OpenAI will use custom GPTs to drive enterprise business
“Basically they're going to use this to obviously drive their enterprise business when they make their money.”
Brit Morin: Non-technical companies will create interim AI interface roles
“I think there continues to be not a meaningful venture play, but like a new job type, at least that will exist in this interim period where like a lot of non-technical companies I'm thinking of like all the recipe sites out there or something, right? Like they…”
Jessica Lessin: BuzzFeed attempted dedicated AI integration and failed
“Buzzfeed did that, and it didn't work, but okay, let's go back to that.”
Brit Morin used Bard to fact-check stats during a board meeting
“I had a board meeting earlier this week for two days, and I actually was using BARD throughout the board meeting to, like, call people out for stats they were talking about or, like, think quicker than other people in the meeting, and it was, like, an accelera…”
Sam Lessin: The Facebook developer platform died and failed
“Yeah, but Facebook platform died, babe. It didn't work.”
Sam Lessin: AI progress is asymptoting with no major breakthroughs coming
“And I think I'm, as you know, extremely skeptical in the, like, this is some sort of like, this is asymptoting. Like we know what this looks like and it's going to be useful and like, it's good. I don't think there's some like major next breakthrough.”
Dave Morin: Google AI Predicts NFL Pass Rushers Better Than Live Announcers
“Apparently Google I think on YouTube with sports and the NFL, they're basically, like, have these little rings that show up underneath the athletes as they move into position before the play starts, and the AI is actually predicting who's going to rush the qua…”
Brit Morin: AI sports betting is only a short-term opportunity
“That's like a very short-term win. Yeah, this, like, isn't going to last forever.”
Sam Lessin: AI will manage humans, not the other way around
“No, the opposite. Like AI is the manager and people are the doers.”
Sam Lessin: AI will force the creation of human-only gambling spaces
“I think it's actually more online betting is fucked, right? Like, whereas you can't, basically you're going to need to create spaces that are human only for things like gambling.”
Brit Morin: Tech IPO market will remain difficult through 2024
“I think we're, it's, I think all of 20, 24 is going to be pretty difficult, but I do think the M&A markets are going to continue.”
Sam Lessin: The era of frequent tech IPOs is permanently over
“It's not that it won't happen. Of course someone's going to go public. It's not going to zero, but like the era of like lots of IPOs for tech is just done, right? Like it turns out that these are pretty shitty companies in general.”
Sam Lessin: AI benefits will accrue mostly to mega-cap tech
“There's, in this moment, there's very little reason to buy subscale tech companies because the benefits of AI, et cetera, are just going to accrue to the biggest companies.”
Morin: Silicon Valley VC relies on one contract despite diverse LP risk appetites
“And for the most part, the ecosystem uses one contract and there are all of these different forms of risk, right? And everyone goes around pitching all these you know, limited partners, the same contract and the each limited partner wants different types of ri…”
Dave Morin: AI-empowered small teams will challenge standard VC models
“There's all of these new tools that the AI revolution is putting out into the ether. That's that, Sam, I think you're very right. Are going to empower the small business. They're going to empower the small team of people to make a lot of cashflow to make reall…”
Lessin: Sub-$20B businesses are shut out by both banks and venture capitalists
“Small businesses you know, things that aren't, can't be public company, twenty billion dollar public companies ever are very poorly served by everyone right now because banks won't lend to them. And you know, there's no capital for them and venture capitalists…”