Wesley Tian, founder of Aragon.ai, contrasts capital-intensive startup ideas with lean software models for first-time entrepreneurs.
Disclosure
Tian posted fake success stories on Reddit to acquire early users
“I basically, like, went on Reddit, and I had this idea to, like, pretend I got a date by using Eragon to create photos for my dating app. So I went out to slash r slash Tinder, and I was like, Hey guys, I used Aragon to, like, create these pictures of me, and,…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tian predicts all AI headshot tools will reach 99% quality within a year
“I think maybe in a year, like, we'll all get to, like, sort of, like, 99%, right? And so, I do think there's a bar, and I do think brand and distribution plays a big difference.”
Assertion Supported
Early Stable Diffusion models primarily worked well on white people
“It only worked for, like, I think, like, certain ethnicities, like, because the model, like, say with Fusion was, like, trained, like, it wasn't trained on a very comprehensive data set. So maybe like only working on like white people. Right. And so like for e…”
Opinion
Wesley Tian says Canva's AI headshot product is 'terrible'
“And Canva's product is terrible, by the way. They have a free product, but it takes a few seconds, but the output doesn't even look like you.”
Disclosure
Aragon claimed thousands of users on its site before acquiring them
“Early on, like you know, I think a lot of companies do this, but like, we didn't have that many users, but we still put, like, used by thousands of people. And by doing that, we actually got to thousands of people.”
Assertion Supported
Tian claims Neo accelerator offers 2x better terms than Y Combinator
“NIO has like around two X better terms and it's like a tighter neck community, so it's like, it's only 20 20 startups per batch versus YC, I think it was like a 200 something.”