StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Google

also referred to as: google+

includes Google Search, Google DeepMind, Google Photos, Google Chrome, Google Analytics, Google Brain, Google Ads, Google Cloud, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google Gemini and 45 more

129 statements across 61 episodes · 43 bullish · 36 bearish · 47 people on the record · first statement May 17, 2017 by Ammon Bartram · said 1,106 times in 200 episodes since 2016 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by David Lieb (81), Craig Cannon (77), Eli Schwartz (68), Paul Buchheit (58), Michael Seibel (57), Dalton Caldwell (52), Aravind Srinivas (48), Gustaf Alströmer (45)

tap a year for its mentions
00200254005020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
0255020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
0042585020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 85 mentions in 23 episodes 4 per episode
2025 184 mentions in 30 episodes 6 per episode
2024 73 mentions in 12 episodes 6 per episode
2023 48 mentions in 10 episodes 5 per episode
2022 81 mentions in 18 episodes 5 per episode
2020 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2019 152 mentions in 27 episodes 6 per episode
2018 347 mentions in 50 episodes 7 per episode
2017 129 mentions in 26 episodes 5 per episode
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Google, oldest first

May 17, 2017 positive
Opinion
Bartram: Google's computer-science-skewed engineering culture worked well
“Google, you know, has, intentionally or unintentionally, grown very much in a computer science direction, and that's obviously worked out, you know, very well for them.”
Ammon Bartram May 17, 2017 ▶ 5:20 Hiring Engineers with Ammon Bartram · Y Combinator
May 17, 2017 neutral
Assertion Supported
Zaremba: Google avoided ML in Search early on over interpretability issues
“Over the time Google search started to use machine learning because it was, it helps to improve results but simultaneously, they wanted to avoid it for some time as it's more difficult to interpret the results, and it's more difficult to actually understand wh…”
Wojciech Zaremba May 17, 2017 ▶ 11:53 An AI Primer with Wojciech Zaremba · Y Combinator
Jun 16, 2017 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hwang: Modern AI techniques were considered dead ends a decade ago
“A lot of the modern techniques in artificial intelligence, if you even asked people like a decade ago, they would have told you like, this is never going to be a thing. It's a complete dead end. Why are you doing this research? And it really has kind of explod…”
Tim Hwang Jun 16, 2017 ▶ 1:34 At the Intersection of AI, Governments, and Google - Tim Hwang · Y Combinator
Jun 16, 2017 neutral
Insight
Hwang: De-biasing AI models creates trade-offs with minority data privacy
“Once a machine learning system is behaving in a biased way, one way of trying to deal with it is collecting more diverse data. Okay. But one of the big problems is when you do that, you end up collecting lots and lots of data about minorities, which raises all…”
Tim Hwang Jun 16, 2017 ▶ 2:36 At the Intersection of AI, Governments, and Google - Tim Hwang · Y Combinator
Jun 16, 2017 neutral
Assertion Supported
Hwang: Google DeepDream's barbell representation always included human arms
“It turns out that when you ask it to see, like, ask it to reveal what, like, it thinks a barbell looks like, you know, barbells always show up with human arms attached to them.”
Tim Hwang Jun 16, 2017 ▶ 4:48 At the Intersection of AI, Governments, and Google - Tim Hwang · Y Combinator
Jun 16, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Hwang: Google is researching federated learning for on-device ML training
“So we're actually working on a little bit of research around that. I haven't played around with it myself, but for example, there's a couple of papers around what they call federated learning, where we're just exactly working on this premise, which is the bet …”
Tim Hwang Jun 16, 2017 ▶ 33:51 At the Intersection of AI, Governments, and Google - Tim Hwang · Y Combinator
Jun 23, 2017 positive
Insight
Alströmer: Growth disciplines become vital when new platforms emerge
“Growth kind of becomes important when they have new platforms. So you have Facebook platform, you have the mobile platform, you have Google, SEO, there's a bunch of larger platforms that makes people actually care about investing in them.”
Gustaf Alströmer Jun 23, 2017 ▶ 4:36 Scaling Growth | Gustaf Alstromer, YC Partner (formerly Airbnb) & Ed Baker (formerly Uber) · Y Combinator
Jul 1, 2017 negative
Opinion
Benet: Decentralized internet tech directly opposes Google's data control model
“I think this kind of tech is stuff that Google might be interested in funding from the perspective of Google funds a lot of protocols and funds a lot of research, but it also kind of runs counter to basic Google positions around, you know, data, control of dat…”
Juan Benet Jul 1, 2017 ▶ 2:04 IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO with Juan Benet and Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator
Jul 1, 2017 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benet: Ethereum could reach Google or Apple valuations in 5-10 years
“So if Ethereum continues to be useful five, 10 years from now, you're going to have, and continues to accrue continues to grow, right? So if Ethereum becomes more and more successful, continues to solve a whole bunch of problems, then an ether is going to be w…”
Juan Benet Jul 1, 2017 ▶ 1:04:51 IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO with Juan Benet and Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator
Jul 1, 2017
What-if
Benet: IPFS would have died in academia's publish-or-perish model
“Really I think, like, the only option was either, ah, university or Google, and in the university case, it would have been killed in, in the, you know, publish or perish world where, like, hey, this is way too ambitious. Focus on this, like, one little thing, …”
Juan Benet Jul 1, 2017 ▶ 1:39 IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO with Juan Benet and Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator
Jul 1, 2017 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benet: Distributed labs with long-term funding will replace Bell Labs model
“I think this is, you probably won't see the creation of a Bell Labs like the one before. It's possible that someone like Google and so on creates it, but I think what we'll have instead is, is a much more distributed version of it, where you will have smaller …”
Juan Benet Jul 1, 2017 ▶ 1:13:25 IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO with Juan Benet and Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator
Jul 21, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Eck: Magenta aims to build creative tools, not act as artists
“The reason that I put that quote there, I think, is to be honest with the division between engineering and research and artistry, and to not think that what I'm doing is being a machine learning artist, but we're trying to build interesting ways to make new ki…”
Doug Eck Jul 21, 2017 ▶ 1:20 Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta · Y Combinator
Jul 21, 2017 negative
Opinion
Eck: Magenta's generated AI music is not yet good enough for testing
“I, at least for Magenta, I haven't felt like the quality of what we've been generating has been good enough to bother, so to speak. Like you find it, you cherry pick, you find some good things, you're like, okay, this model trains, and it's interesting, and no…”
Doug Eck Jul 21, 2017 ▶ 5:08 Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta · Y Combinator
Jul 21, 2017 neutral
Disclosure
Eck: Magenta prioritized timbre generation over sequence generation
“I haven't, well, we haven't pushed the sequence generation stuff much because we really wanted to focus on, on tamper.”
Doug Eck Jul 21, 2017 ▶ 16:14 Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta · Y Combinator
Jul 21, 2017 positive
Assertion Supported
Eck: Magenta has a core API enabling real-time MIDI AI collaboration
“I think the API, the core API that allows us to move music around in real time in MIDI, and actually have a meaningful conversation between an AI model and multiple musicians is there, and there's just a bunch more thinking that needs to happen, right, to get …”
Doug Eck Jul 21, 2017 ▶ 42:58 Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta · Y Combinator
Jul 21, 2017 neutral
Assertion Supported
Eck: Google AI Duet relies on simple 2002 RNN technology
“And what I noticed, even with AI Duet, which is this like web-based, like, it's a simple RNN. It's like, I can lay claim. It's technology that was published in 2002. It's really a very simple, really simple.”
Doug Eck Jul 21, 2017 ▶ 13:16 Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - Doug Eck of Magenta · Y Combinator
Aug 4, 2017 neutral
Disclosure
Greene: Google spends about $10 billion annually on infrastructure
“We spend about ten billion a year in infrastructure”
Diane Greene Aug 4, 2017 ▶ 18:05 VMware Cofounder Diane Greene with Jessica Livingston at the Female Founders Conference · Y Combinator
Aug 4, 2017 positive
Insight
Greene: Having three female board members makes a huge difference over two
“And so I'm the third woman to join that board, which is, it makes a huge difference to have three instead of two.”
Diane Greene Aug 4, 2017 ▶ 11:07 VMware Cofounder Diane Greene with Jessica Livingston at the Female Founders Conference · Y Combinator
Sep 8, 2017 positive
Insight
Bernstam: Sourcing the best former colleagues of new hires drives recruiting
“Once we kind of got, like, a couple amazing hires out of the Google search team, we just kept asking every, we asked every single hire, like, who's the best person you've worked with? Like, who would you co-found a company with? And then we would just go, go t…”
Tikhon Bernstam Sep 8, 2017 ▶ 23:50 The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces - Tikhon Bernstam · Y Combinator
Sep 8, 2017 neutral
Assertion Supported
Bernstam: Firebase pivoted from web chat into backend services before Google acquisition
“Well, Firebase did, right? So they were actually in our batch. They were a different company at the time. They were doing like basically chat for every website. They were trying to do that for everyone. And they ended up pivoting later into doing basically lik…”
Tikhon Bernstam Sep 8, 2017 ▶ 26:40 The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces - Tikhon Bernstam · Y Combinator
Nov 1, 2017 negative
Opinion
Hackett: Google erred pitching wearable cameras as AI platforms, not cameras
“In, in typical Google form, they pitched it though as like, this is the center of our AI learning platform about the world, which is the same marketing mistake they made with everyone wants a face computer. No, everyone does not want a face computer. Everyone …”
Matt Hackett Nov 1, 2017 ▶ 0:05 Casey Neistat and Matt Hackett on Live Video's Struggle for Interestingness · Y Combinator
Nov 29, 2017 positive
Opinion
Sloan: Google Magenta is one of few groups doing creative AI right
“I actually think, I think they're one of the sort of the few people slash groups that are doing it right. People on the podcast should know I'm making air quotes, doing it right. And that's only to say they're super competent technically and interested in kind…”
Robin Sloan Nov 29, 2017 ▶ 40:43 Microbes, Robots, and Ambition - Robin Sloan on His Novel Sourdough · Y Combinator
Jan 5, 2018 negative
Insight
Cannon: Podcasters must transcribe audio because Google cannot index it
“I would also say to podcasters, definitely transcribe your stuff, because Google is not friendly to audio, and you want that, like, index stuff right there.”
Craig Cannon Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 44:38 Leah Culver of Breaker and Tom Sparks of YC Answer Your Questions About Security and Podcasting · Y Combinator
Mar 6, 2018
Insight
Levy: Angel Investors Waste Time Negotiating Downside Protection
“If you believe in the power law and you invest that way, excuse me, then what you're not going to do is waste time negotiating downside protection, because what you've realized is that eking out a one and a half X return On all these little investments is not …”
Carolynn Levy Mar 6, 2018 ▶ 33:48 Carolynn Levy and Kirsty Nathoo - Startup Investor School Day 1 · Y Combinator
Mar 7, 2018
Assertion Supported
Buchheit: Google founders tried to sell for $1M to Yahoo and Excite
“Larry and Sergey were PhD students there. And they actually wanted to continue being PhD students and, like, finish their degree, so they went off and tried to sell Google to one of the big internet companies of the time, so, you know, Yahoo, Xsite, Infoseek. …”
Paul Buchheit Mar 7, 2018 ▶ 5:41 Paul Buchheit - Startup Investor School Day 2 · Y Combinator
Mar 8, 2018
Disclosure
Nozad sourced early deals by cold-emailing Persian Stanford CS students
“I remember in, when I started in late nineties and I didn't know how to find founders I was going on Stanford computer science actually school looking at every name that looked Iranian or Persian and sending an email and inviting them for tea. And I ended up i…”
Pejman Nozad Mar 8, 2018 ▶ 1:02:53 Elad Gil and Pejman Nozad - Startup Investor School Day 3 · Y Combinator
Mar 30, 2018 positive
Insight
Ravisankar: Top '10x' developers are distinguished by strong business acumen
“The other thing that I'm starting to see happen across a lot of different companies, and even Hackerank has incorporated this, is the business acumen the level of business acumen that you have as a developer. Usually it is, it's always developers or builders. …”
Vivek Ravisankar Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 47:02 Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar · Y Combinator
Mar 30, 2018 neutral
What-if
Ravisankar: Interview Street should have focused on 2-3 companies first
“I think we should have focused on, you know what, we're just going to focus on these two companies, mock interviews, right, versus Any tech company anywhere in the world, and we were scrambling for interviewers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all over. We shou…”
Vivek Ravisankar Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 5:25 Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar · Y Combinator
Mar 30, 2018 neutral
Insight
Ravisankar: Student debt and visas create startup inertia for master's grads
“You do two years of masters, then you do two to three years of working in different companies to pay back the loan, and there's all of these visa things. And by the time you want to start, you're already, I don't know, close to five, six years invested in this…”
Vivek Ravisankar Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 11:34 Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar · Y Combinator
May 25, 2018 neutral
Assertion Supported
Benjamin: Google, IBM, and Intel are primarily pursuing superconducting qubits
“In fact, if you look online, you will hear more about the superconducting qubits, which is the approach, the main approach that Google and IBM and even Intel are taking.”
Simon Benjamin May 25, 2018 ▶ 40:37 Simon Benjamin on Architectures for Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
May 31, 2018 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wessel: Google APMM program hires 25 to 50 US students annually
“They hire, like, 25 to 50 U.S. College students each year to be in this program, and it's filled with alumni who have started unbelievable businesses.”
Liz Wessel May 31, 2018 ▶ 5:35 Advice for Students and Recent Graduates on Finding Jobs – Liz Wessel of WayUp · Y Combinator
May 31, 2018 positive
Opinion
Botha via Wessel: Google offers premier operating experience for future founders
“Google is one of the best operating companies in the world, tech companies especially. You'll be surrounded by great managers, great engineers. You'll meet great talent that you might hire one day.”
Liz Wessel May 31, 2018 ▶ 7:06 Advice for Students and Recent Graduates on Finding Jobs – Liz Wessel of WayUp · Y Combinator
Jul 6, 2018 positive
Insight
João Batalha: Inline context dramatically increases reader follow-through versus searching
“And sometimes that content does exist, but the, being able to find it easily, having, having that, like, in your fingertips, Fingertips can make the whole difference, right? Where even if you, yeah, maybe you could do, spend like a minute, like searching on Go…”
João Batalha Jul 6, 2018 ▶ 48:57 Fermat's Library Cofounders João Batalha and Luís Batalha · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2018
Assertion Supported
Google's Series A investors required founders to hire an outside CEO
“I mean, this was back in the days when Google's VCs had invest, insisted that the founders hire an outside CEO as a condition of their Series A round.”
Jessica Livingston Jul 11, 2018 ▶ 9:51 Jessica Livingston Shares 9 Things She Learned From Founding YC · Y Combinator
Jul 27, 2018
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gil: Early Google required eight interviews and hired well, but fired poorly
“Google was an example of a company that hired extremely well. They had, I think it was a minimum for a while of eight interviews per person, literally. And if you didn't do all eight, you wouldn't be able to get in kind of thing. And they were terrible at firi…”
Elad Gil Jul 27, 2018 ▶ 23:24 Elad Gil Shares Advice from the High Growth Handbook, a Guide to Scaling Startups · Y Combinator
Jul 27, 2018
Assertion Supported
Gil: Google spent hundreds of millions yearly on Firefox and Adobe distribution
“And so examples where people were very aggressive about distribution with things like Google, where they were spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on things like Firefox, having Google prominently displayed on its homepage. They literally paid for, …”
Elad Gil Jul 27, 2018 ▶ 20:52 Elad Gil Shares Advice from the High Growth Handbook, a Guide to Scaling Startups · Y Combinator
Sep 8, 2018 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Garg: The company cracking food personalization will win the sector long-term
“I still today think that the power of personalization, what Amazon brings to e-commerce and what Netflix and Spotify bring to movies and music. That level of personalization has not taken off in food. And just like Google with search, the company that cracks i…”
Ooshma Garg Sep 8, 2018 ▶ 18:13 A Conversation with Ooshma Garg - Moderated by Adora Cheung · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 negative
Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Google dislikes ranking search-within-search platforms like Pinterest
“Google specifically does not like search within search. Google would much prefer that you don't go to Pinterest, that you go directly to where that image was, but maybe that site didn't do a great job of optimizing the image, but Pinterest did, so now Pinteres…”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 19:46 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 neutral
Insight
Schwartz: Google rankings no longer reward raw backlink quantity
“Links are still very important, but they're not important in the sense that they used to be where people measure them by quantity. Like, my competitor has a hundred links to this page, I need a 101 links, and if I get a 101 links, then I will guarantee rank ah…”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 23:19 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 positive
Opinion
Schwartz: Google Search Console is more accurate than third-party tools
“And my favorite search tool is, is Google Search Console because it, it's from Google. It may or may not be as accurate as can be, but it's probably more accurate than other tools which are sort of projecting what the actual truth is.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 3:00 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 negative
Insight
Schwartz: Separate international domains are no longer an SEO best practice
“It used to be best practices where you would build another website for customers in another country. I no longer think that's the best practice.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 33:49 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018
Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Google Play ranks apps based on all visible text fields
“So on Google, the way they rank an app is based on all the visible text. So it's the name of the app, which is sort of like the title. The short description, which is forget how many characters, but a shorter page description of the app, which you see right ab…”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 10:02 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 positive
Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Local businesses have a Google ranking advantage over national competitors
“You don't really need to rank on unclogged drains anymore, because Google is very local. So if you're in San Francisco, and you're a plumber, and someone searches unclogged drains, you now have a much higher chance of ranking on unclogged drains than Roto-Root…”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 13:53 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 neutral
Prediction Held up
Schwartz: Google will eventually understand images directly without alt text
“Google eventually will figure out what images are, and they're getting closer to figuring out what images are.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 18:53 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018
Insight
Schwartz: YouTube SEO requires metadata because Google cannot parse video
“So YouTube's different, because Google's not great at really understanding what the video's about. So by giving more information, and it could be a transcription, It's, ah, those keywords that you put in, you're giving a better indication of what the video is …”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 9:32 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 negative
Opinion
Schwartz: Google struggles to understand and rank JavaScript in real time
“So Google, as much as they say they're really good at understanding and ranking JavaScript, They're not because in real time when they're looking for your content, you are handicapping yourself by not having just raw text words on the page.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 11:34 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 positive
Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Sites penalized by Google can recover within weeks
“Now, like, things are more automated and algorithmic, where if you got hit by the penalty one day, you cleaned it up, did everything possible, maybe filed a reconsideration request, you can be back in a couple weeks.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 46:01 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 neutral
Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Google grew Korean search share via Samsung and LG ties
“What Google used to not be dominant in In Korea, and they've been increasing dominance through their Trojan horse of Android. So Google's obviously very closely partnered with Samsung and LG, Korean companies. And as Korean users use these products, they use G…”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 38:25 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 positive
Insight
Schwartz: Randomizing URL cross-links is an effective SEO strategy
“One thing I found to be very effective for cross-linking is just randomization. So if you randomize your URLs, you make sure that provided your randomization algorithm is correct. Every single URL ends up being cross-linked. So if users click it, great. If the…”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 6:19 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 bearish
Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Meta keywords are completely obsolete for SEO
“Meta keywords is a great example of something that's no longer useful. And the reason meta keywords existed is because Google and other search engines actually were relevant at the time, didn't have a really good way of understanding text.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 8:29 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 negative
Insight
Schwartz: Never build site features purely for web crawlers
“There's nothing you should be doing that's just for crawlers. It should all be for users.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 8:02 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Sep 27, 2018 negative
Opinion
Schwartz: Tracking keyword rankings is obsolete and distracts from users
“I no longer believe in ever measuring keyword rankings, like as we discussed, we're focusing on a user, so it's not just generic rankings.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 44:38 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator
Oct 24, 2018 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Buchheit: Orkut died in the US because it became too slow
“Orkut actually was taking off. and you can make up a bunch of reasons why maybe it didn't end up being the social network, but it was exploding. and then it became, it was growing so fast it became unresponsive. So, like, it just, that was kind of why it die…”
Paul Buchheit Oct 24, 2018 ▶ 52:47 The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
Oct 24, 2018
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Buchheit wrote the first version of Gmail in a single day
“So the very first version of Gmail I wrote in a day and it wasn't very good but I took, I had previously been working on Google Groups, which was like a Usenet search at the time, now it's something different, but I took the code that I've been working on for …”
Paul Buchheit Oct 24, 2018 ▶ 14:08 The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
Oct 24, 2018 negative
Opinion
Buchheit: Early search rivals failed because they did not know what they were doing
“When we started really just like pushing all, just crushing all of the other search engines, and then there was like a feeling of inevitability. Like it was pretty clear we were just gonna win because no one else, Like, they just didn't even know what they wer…”
Paul Buchheit Oct 24, 2018 ▶ 10:57 The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
Oct 24, 2018 positive
Insight
Buchheit: Smart Interview Questions Are a Strong Indicator of Startup Caliber
“I was really impressed when I was interviewing with them that they asked, actually, like, really smart questions, which I think is a pretty good indication.”
Paul Buchheit Oct 24, 2018 ▶ 6:43 The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
Oct 24, 2018 neutral
Insight
Buchheit: Building mega-scale companies requires riding exponential shifts, not just working harder
“It, I don't think it's that you're smarter necessarily. It helps to be smart. It isn't that you're harder working. Like there's a limit to how hard you can work. What I think necessarily to get to that point, you're sitting on top of a big exponential change i…”
Paul Buchheit Oct 24, 2018 ▶ 42:06 The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
Jan 23, 2019
Assertion Supported
Political actors use traditional SEO tactics to game Google and YouTube
“We're seeing a lot more gaming of the algorithms as well, and more of these kind of sophisticated techniques. So not just liking and sharing, but using specific keywords to get content trending, to try to get things at the top of Google's search algorithm, try…”
Samantha Bradshaw Jan 23, 2019 ▶ 5:02 Tracking Political Manipulation Through Social Media - Samantha Bradshaw · Y Combinator
Apr 3, 2019 neutral
Assertion Supported
Allred: Google spent $100 million in compensation to retain Sundar Pichai
“Google has in the past spent a hundred million dollars to retain Sundar and stuff like that.”
Austen Allred Apr 3, 2019 ▶ 26:46 A CS Education That's Free Until You Get a Job - Austen Allred of Lambda School · Y Combinator
May 8, 2019
Disclosure
Halligan: Very few HubSpot customers originate from Facebook or Google ads
“Like, if you look at where our customers come from today, they come from search engine optimization. They come from our freemium model. A very small percentage of them comes from ads we do on Facebook and Google.”
Brian Halligan May 8, 2019 ▶ 29:12 HubSpot CEO and Cofounder Brian Halligan with Wufoo Cofounder Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Jun 19, 2019 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rossmann: Prestigious colleges remain the primary hiring pipeline for Google and Apple
“Top schools, the ones that attract majority wealthy students and that have a lot of prestige associated to them continue to be the major hiring funnels for new grads for these companies. Including Google and Apple. The large, a large number, at some companies …”
Jeremy Rossmann Jun 19, 2019 ▶ 25:10 Jeremy Rossmann of Make School on Income Share Agreements and the Future of College · Y Combinator
Jun 19, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Rossmann: Make School Has Run Income Share Programs Since 2014
“We've been running the income share based program since 2014. So we actually have five years of data, our students getting jobs at Facebook, Google and Tesla and all these great companies.”
Jeremy Rossmann Jun 19, 2019 ▶ 3:56 Jeremy Rossmann of Make School on Income Share Agreements and the Future of College · Y Combinator
Jul 25, 2019 negative
Insight
Hale: Big Tech Experience Does Not Give Founders an Unfair Advantage
“And so if you think it's like, well, I'm a product manager at Google. There's a lot of product managers at Google. If you say you're an engineer at Microsoft, there's a lot of engineers at Microsoft. It's like, great, but it's not one that will make me think, …”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 14:24 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Aug 15, 2019 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Alströmer: Pinterest acquires new users primarily via Google SEO
“If you think of Pinterest, SEO is the re, the real way how Pinterest is going. You type something in on Google, there already exists a Pinterest board for that, and you land on that Pinterest board. That's how they acquire new users.”
Gustaf Alströmer Aug 15, 2019 ▶ 25:34 Gustaf Alströmer - Growth for Startups · Y Combinator
Nov 27, 2019 negative
Opinion
Doctorow: Big Tech's calls for regulation are bids for state monopoly
“And, you know, Facebook is positioning itself to become a state monopoly like the Bell system was, as is Google, as is Apple, right? All of these companies, they want to be, when they say, please regulate us, right? When they say, please make rules to tell us …”
Cory Doctorow Nov 27, 2019 ▶ 27:40 Cory Doctorow and Joe Betts-Lacroix on Adversarial Interoperability · Y Combinator
Dec 4, 2019
Assertion Supported
Cutts: The SearchKing lawsuit established search results are First Amendment protected
“The result of that lawsuit was that search results are protected by the first amendment.”
Matt Cutts Dec 4, 2019 ▶ 8:36 Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator
Dec 4, 2019 negative
What-if
Cutts: AltaVista would have crushed Google if they grasped ranking signals
“I remember when Alta Vista, I was worried they were going to crush us. Cause like, you know, you have a certain number of ranking signals and if they had twigged and caught on fast enough, they even like copied our appearance.”
Matt Cutts Dec 4, 2019 ▶ 2:56 Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator
Dec 4, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Early Google spam moderation lacked the trauma modern content moderators face
“Like Safe Search was just towards pornography, and spam was more like, buy cheap Viagra, and loan consolidation stuff, and so it wasn't nearly as bad as a lot of the content moderators had to deal with.”
Matt Cutts Dec 4, 2019 ▶ 11:44 Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator
Dec 4, 2019
Insight
Cutts: Google Webspam Team Used Manual Reviews to Train Future Algorithms
“I, in general, with web spam, the philosophy was do as much as you can with an algorithm. Catch the residual with, you know, manual spam people who are, you know, well trained and extremely good at being able to catch things, and then use that as the training …”
Matt Cutts Dec 4, 2019 ▶ 17:33 Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator
Dec 4, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cutts: In 2000, Google Engineers Doubted Spam Would Ever Threaten Search
“Google was great at the time, like back in 2000, it's, you'd have a hard time convincing people like there was ever going to be spammed.”
Matt Cutts Dec 4, 2019 ▶ 15:53 Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator
Feb 16, 2022
Assertion Supported
Caldwell: Google ran on a stale search index for months around 2001
“There was some point where for maybe three months, maybe four months, I don't remember the exact details. There was no new index of Google. They had stale results. So anyone, any user of Google, they didn't know that, you know, the user didn't know this, but a…”
Dalton Caldwell Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 22:05 Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator
Feb 16, 2022 neutral
What-if
Caldwell: Gmail almost wasn't released due to hardware concerns at Google
“It was hard for him to get Google to release it because they were afraid it was going to take up too much hardware, and so there was all these issues where there's a good, there was a decent chance I think it never would have been released.”
Dalton Caldwell Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 4:41 Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator
Feb 16, 2022
Assertion Supported
Caldwell: MapReduce was created because Google's batch indexing failed
“This was the genesis for them to create MapReduce, which they wrote a paper about. Which was a way to parallelize and break into pieces all the little bits of crawling and re-indexing the web.”
Dalton Caldwell Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 22:30 Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator
Feb 16, 2022 neutral
Assertion Supported
Caldwell: Gmail invite system was forced by server limits, not growth hacking
“They physically did not have enough servers. So they had to build an invite system. There was not an option to not, but basically there was no option other than building an invite system. It was not like genius PM growth hacking.”
Dalton Caldwell Feb 16, 2022 ▶ 5:19 Things That Don't Scale, The Software Edition – Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator
Apr 20, 2022 negative
Insight
Seibel: Google's beta release standard is 10x higher than a startup MVP
“Their standard for getting a product into even beta at Google is 10 X what an MVP in a startup is, and they just have to unlearn. It's like, can anyone find this useful? Launch.”
Michael Seibel Apr 20, 2022 ▶ 8:13 Why You Should Leave Your FAANG Job · Y Combinator
May 6, 2022 positive
Insight
Seibel: Amazon succeeded by strictly accepting its low-margin reality
“This is one of the dirty little secrets behind Amazon. They've always known that they were in a low margin business, and they've always run their company that way. And I'm sure they were so tempted to look at a Google or a Facebook and say, why don't we do tho…”
Michael Seibel May 6, 2022 ▶ 34:30 Save Your Startup During an Economic Downturn · Y Combinator
Dec 29, 2022 negative
Insight
Alströmer: Startups cannot easily learn from users acquired via Google and Facebook
“You can't learn from users if the first thousand or first hundred customers are brought in through Google and Facebook. Those people are not the kind of people that you can easily get on a 30 minute phone call with.”
Gustaf Alströmer Dec 29, 2022 ▶ 22:27 How to Get Your First Customers | Startup School · Y Combinator
Jan 11, 2023 bearish
Insight
Caldwell: Ex-Google executives join early startups because they underperformed or misunderstood reality
“What usually happens is they either are, either they joined your startup because they're, they weren't doing well. I'm trying to think of a nice way to say it. Either there's a reason they joined your startup and left Google, or they had expectations that you …”
Dalton Caldwell Jan 11, 2023 ▶ 19:10 The Secrets To Setting Smarter Goals · Y Combinator
Feb 5, 2023 negative
Opinion
Big Tech is now a conventional prestige industry like finance and medicine
“Today, I might argue that big tech has become put itself solidly in that list, right? It is amongst the finance and consulting and legal and medicine. You know, college kids today obsess with getting jobs at Facebook and Google. They study how they interview J…”
Michael Seibel Feb 5, 2023 ▶ 6:16 The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley · Y Combinator
Jun 30, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caldwell: Pre-Google conventional wisdom wrongly treated search as a commodity
“I think that the conventional wisdom pre-Google was that search was a commodity, and that Yahoo was good enough, and that incremental engineering breakthroughs in search wouldn't matter, and Google disproved that where it was actually a hard technical problem,…”
Dalton Caldwell Jun 30, 2023 ▶ 6:59 Silicon Valley's Cargo Culting Problem · Y Combinator
Jun 30, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caldwell: 2000s founders were told to copy Google's office culture exactly
“There was arguments that copying down to the T every aspect of the Google office culture was key to building a successful startup.”
Dalton Caldwell Jun 30, 2023 ▶ 3:12 Silicon Valley's Cargo Culting Problem · Y Combinator
Aug 1, 2023 negative
Insight
Seibel: Cultivating startup culture won't bring corporate tech offices
“Those politicians, what they're looking for is tech jobs. They're like, the, What they really need is a Google office. Like, they're not gonna get the Google office by having a startup culture, but their politicians didn't realize that.”
Michael Seibel Aug 1, 2023 ▶ 8:00 Does Your Startup Need To Be In San Francisco? · Y Combinator
Nov 1, 2023 positive
Insight
Seibel argues engineers learn much faster at a startup than at Google.
“I think most people don't realize that, like, you can learn at a startup pace or you can learn at a Google pace, and like, a startup is an amazing opportunity to learn. So if you're getting better, faster than your peers who are in big tech, You might be getti…”
Michael Seibel Nov 1, 2023 ▶ 11:15 How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer · Y Combinator
Nov 1, 2023 negative
Insight
Seibel argues grinding 100-hour weeks in big tech is a bad deal.
“I would argue that if you're the Googler, you're getting a bad deal if you're doing, like, a hundred hour weeks and grinding, and, like, your boss or your boss's boss is getting, like, mega vacations and ten million dollar a year packages and, like, promotions…”
Michael Seibel Nov 1, 2023 ▶ 5:42 How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer · Y Combinator
Dec 15, 2023 negative
Insight
Blomfield: Early Startups Lack Scale to Split-Test Minor UI Tweaks
“Making buttons red or green, that's not really something you have the scale to split test until you're really at the size of Google or Facebook.”
Tom Blomfield Dec 15, 2023 ▶ 2:30 B2B Startup Metrics | Startup School · Y Combinator
Jan 6, 2024 bearish
Insight
Blomfield: Over-relying on Google and Meta ads pushes startup margins to zero
“You all take your margins to zero and Google and Meta end up making all the money. That's why it's so dangerous to be so reliant on paid growth.”
Tom Blomfield Jan 6, 2024 ▶ 10:02 Consumer Startup Metrics | Startup School · Y Combinator
Feb 8, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Hu: Seven 'Attention' authors founded startups collectively valued over $6B
“That paper came out in 2017, and the fun fact, I was just looking this up, out of all those authors, eight authors, seven of them started different companies, and all of the companies in total, they're rate, they're worth valuation more than six billion.”
Diana Hu Feb 8, 2024 ▶ 28:33 The Truth About Building AI Startups Today · Y Combinator
May 30, 2024 negative
Opinion
Friedman: Google's early success warped founders into obsessing over premature scalability
“I actually think Google is indirectly responsible responsible for basically scaling. Warping the minds of a whole generation of founders and investors and creating the problem that Paul Graham had to solve with this, which is because Google became so famous fo…”
Jared Friedman May 30, 2024 ▶ 2:10 Startup Experts Discuss Doing Things That Don't Scale · Y Combinator
Jul 12, 2024 negative
Insight
Tan: Startups using Apple or Google launch playbooks will die before launching
“Companies like Apple and Google have infinite budgets. They spend years developing new products and millions of dollars on each launch. If you applied that to any of your startup, your company would die long before you launched anything.”
Garry Tan Jul 12, 2024 ▶ 6:20 Why Startup Founders Should Launch Companies Sooner Than They Think · Y Combinator
Nov 1, 2024 bullish
Insight
Tan: Foundation model giants won't build vertical applications due to inefficiency
“If you treat OpenAI as the Google of the next 20 years, you want to invest in Google and all the things that Google enabled, like Airbnb. Google could do Airbnb, it probably won't. Just from, like, I don't know, Coase's theorem of the firm, probably. It's just…”
Garry Tan Nov 1, 2024 ▶ 20:53 The 10 Trillion Parameter AI Model With 300 IQ · Y Combinator
Dec 18, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google Reassigned the Acquired Bump Team to Google+ on Day One
“Then we showed up. To Google on the first day and there had been a reorg and all of the plans that we had agreed upon with our sponsor were out the window and we were tasked to go work on Google plus the social network.”
David Lieb Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 11:23 How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory · Y Combinator
Dec 18, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google Photos Was Built From Scratch in About Nine Months
“Once we got the green light you know, it was a team of, like, 20 of us from Bump latched on to maybe a team of, like, a hundred people, core people from Google with access to all of this incredible technology, and we were able to build all of Google Photos bas…”
David Lieb Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 13:46 How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory · Y Combinator
Dec 18, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lieb Secretly Designed Google Photos Despite Orders to Build Google+
“I kind of just didn't do what my bosses asked me to do. And it created a ton of conflict. I was definitely not the model employee. I just kind of did it on the back burner. I would go every day and do my day job, and then in the afternoon, I'd go spend some ti…”
David Lieb Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 11:45 How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory · Y Combinator
Dec 18, 2024 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Google Photos Reached One Billion Users in Under Four Years
“Google Photos grew to more than a billion users in less than four years, which I think is the fastest growing product of all time, at least at the time.”
David Lieb Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 14:50 How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory · Y Combinator
Dec 18, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lieb Was Fired Twice From His Team While Pitching Google Photos
“In fact, twice I was a I got fired from the team and told to go find a new role at Google.”
David Lieb Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 13:16 How David Lieb Turned a Failing Startup Into Google Photos | Backstory · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 positive
Opinion
Google's current infrastructure is the closest system to an ideal AI orchestrator
“Whatever Google has already built is the closest system to something like this.”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 30:43 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 bearish
Opinion
YouTube will never achieve profit margins as high as Google Search
“YouTube is not never going to be a high margin business because number one, they don't serve ads on subscription like users. And number two, like they have to pay the creators, they have to pay the media partners. So it's never going to be as high margins as s…”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 32:14 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 bullish
Insight
Inference-time search gives startups a structural advantage over Google's legacy index
“There's one way of doing these things where we go to each of these domains and like try to build an index of it and put it into specific formats like tables and then have the LLM, like read that. In a structured language of SQL, or you could do the other way w…”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 10:54 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 positive
Opinion
Google has better consumer product taste than both OpenAI and Anthropic
“Out of the list you mentioned, Google is the only company that actually has the product taste to do this.”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 31:29 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025
Disclosure
Srinivas initially pitched seed investor Elad Gil on smart glasses, not search
“I was like, adoshes enough to go and pitch to the first seed investor of ours, Elad Gill, that like, hey, like you know, I want to disrupt Google but I kind of want to do it from pixels from a glass”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 6:43 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2030
Search industry revenue must decline as users shift directly to AI agents
“Search revenue has to go down in a world where people are just directly talking to AIs and agents are doing stuff for them.”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 32:43 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 negative
Opinion
Google cannot replicate Perplexity directly on its cluttered search homepage
“They cannot make this exact product on the Google homepage. It's so hard to know when a query is purely informational or not, and then the Google search page is already, like, so cluttered, that's the answer box, the knowledge panel,”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 16:29 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Feb 21, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Whoever builds a billion-user AI query orchestrator will become the next Google
“That sort of router, that, that orchestrator, I think that's the hardest thing to build, and whoever builds that, and can operate that at a scale of billion users, and also knows how to monetize, like, some of those queries really well, is going to be the next…”
Aravind Srinivas Feb 21, 2025 ▶ 30:10 How To Build The Future: Aravind Srinivas · Y Combinator
Mar 18, 2025
Disclosure
Gusto's first prototype hotline drew calls for astrology and relationship advice
“Within, like, a week we had a prototype where you could basically Call a number. It would ping us. We'd have it route effectively. You could just buy some keywords on Google, and then all of a sudden start, you know, getting real people calling you with questi…”
Josh Reeves Mar 18, 2025 ▶ 3:13 From A Pivot To Building A $9.6 Billion Payroll Company · Y Combinator
May 23, 2025 negative
Opinion
Blomfield: Google lost its transformer lead to OpenAI through excessive caution
“And so, I think, like, Google were really on the cutting edge of this transformer technology, and were like, leapfrogged by OpenAI, just because I was too cautious to put stuff out there.”
Tom Blomfield May 23, 2025 ▶ 7:11 How To Design Better AI Apps · Y Combinator
May 23, 2025 negative
Insight
Koomen: Legacy software mindsets prevent unlocking AI's full potential
“Part of the problem is that We're using old software development mentality, old software development techniques to build these features, and we're not actually taking full advantage of what AI can do.”
Pete Koomen May 23, 2025 ▶ 4:40 How To Design Better AI Apps · Y Combinator
May 30, 2025 positive
Opinion
Taggar: o3 follows rubrics rigidly while Gemini 2.5 Pro reasons flexibly
“Oh, three was very rigid, actually. Like it really sticks to the rubric. It's heavily penalizes for anything that doesn't fit like the rubric that you've given it. Whereas Gemini 2.5 pro was actually quite good at being flexible in that it would apply the rubr…”
Harj Taggar May 30, 2025 ▶ 27:53 State-Of-The-Art Prompting For AI Agents · Y Combinator
May 30, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Friedman: Gemini API added thinking traces for debugging prompts
“Cause if you're just using Gemini via the API until recently, you did not get the thinking traces and like the thinking traces are like the critical debugging information to like, understand like What's wrong with your prompt? They just added it to the API. So…”
Jared Friedman May 30, 2025 ▶ 13:00 State-Of-The-Art Prompting For AI Agents · Y Combinator
Jun 21, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Altman: Never Looked at Colleges or Big-Tech Resumes for YC Applications
“When I was, like, reading YC applications, I would, like, never look at the resume items. You know, you worked at, like, Google, or went to this college, or I never cared. I would always go right to, like, what's the most impressive stuff you've done, and then…”
Sam Altman Jun 21, 2025 ▶ 31:33 Sam Altman: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT's Origins, and Building AI Hardware · Y Combinator
Jun 27, 2025 positive
Opinion
Green: Google Achieved More Category Dominance in Search Than Any Big Tech Peer
“I think Google, starting in search, probably held the most dominance in a category, in a, in an activity than anybody else, right?”
Kirsten Green Jun 27, 2025 ▶ 23:30 Legendary Consumer VC Predicts The Future Of AI Products · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 positive
Opinion
Srinivas: Autonomous mobile AI agents can only be built inside web browsers
“And agents can only be built with a browser. I, I'm very, like, convinced about that vision, that if you want to have a mobile agent, That you can actually build and implement without being restricted by whatever OS rules that Apple or Google sets in terms of …”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 36:10 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 negative
Opinion
Srinivas: Google rebrands and announces the same AI search features every year
“The same feature is being launched year after year after year with a different name, with a different VP, with a different group of people, but it's the same thing. Except maybe it's getting better, but it's never getting launched to everybody.”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 14:26 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 negative
Insight
Srinivas: Google's ad model disincentivizes providing direct search answers
“If you get direct answers to these questions with booking links right there, how are you going to mint money from booking and Expedia and Kayak and like, you know, all like same, same, same thing for shopping. How are you going to take money from Amazon and li…”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 12:36 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srinivas: Google avoided transactions because CPA margins trail CPCs
“CPAs have historically been way lower margins than CPCs, which is why Google never became a transaction platform.”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 29:33 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Srinivas: Sundar Pichai is personally doing bug support on X
“Like I've noticed even Sundar is doing bug support on X right now.”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 5:42 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 neutral
Insight
Srinivas: Forcing AI on massive mainstream user bases is difficult
“There are a lot of people in the world who hate AI, by the way, so I think just throwing AI down people's throats on such a, you know, massive distribution area is not easy.”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 33:48 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 positive
Opinion
Srinivas: Browsers are the natural graduation step from search engines
“And browser and search are not two distinctive products. They're actually, like, the browser is a natural graduation step from search. Just like how Google graduated from Google search to Chrome. And Chrome is the main reason they got billions of daily queries…”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 35:41 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Jul 11, 2025 bearish
Assertion Partly supported
Srinivas: Google possessed only fourth or fifth best AI models in 2023-2024
“And 2024, 20 23 especially, and large part of 2024 too, Google had like, maybe a fourth or fifth best models at any moment. So as a startup outside Google, you had access to AI that was better than what Google internally had.”
Aravind Srinivas Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 13:06 Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity's Race to Build Agentic Search · Y Combinator
Sep 12, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Masad: The AI ecosystem will be driven by multiple specialized expert agents
“I think multiple agents. And the reason I think that's true is because let's, let's say I'm someone with true, unique, Domain expertise. Let's say I'm a lawyer who is top in the world at solving certain cases that, that are very rare. And so I have this domain…”
Amjad Masad Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 26:22 The Future of Software Creation with Replit CEO Amjad Masad · Y Combinator
Sep 16, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lieb: Google Photos operates at a 90-plus percent gross margin
“And it turns out it's like a 90 plus percent margin.”
David Lieb Sep 16, 2025 ▶ 24:15 Aaron Levie: Why Startups Win In The AI Era · Y Combinator
Dec 3, 2025 negative
Opinion
Skates: Google is the worst B2B company of all time
“I think that Google is the worst B to B company of all time, and there's an incredible opportunity to compete with them.”
Spencer Skates Dec 3, 2025 ▶ 26:42 How Amplitude Went From Skeptics to “All In” on AI · Y Combinator
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Diana Hu: AI's future Google- and Facebook-scale startups have not started yet
“Startups like the future Facebook or the future Google are yet to be started because those come in in the deployment phase, because right now I think these things, things are still getting built up.”
Diana Hu Dec 22, 2025 ▶ 14:13 The Truth About The AI Bubble · Y Combinator
Feb 27, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Frontier labs achieve recursive self-improvement by retraining models at each step
“And, you know, of course, Anthropic and OpenAI and Google, they're exploring recursive self-improvement, but Typically at that level of having the, you know, having to train a new model for every step of self-improvement that they do.”
Ian Fisher Feb 27, 2026 ▶ 1:55 The Powerful Alternative To Fine-Tuning · Y Combinator
Jun 19, 2026 negative
Insight
Bryant Chou: Generating mass AI websites does not build Google authority
“You can't create a hundred websites and then expect Google to think that, Hey, you're an authoritative source and just creating content for content's sake is not the goal.”
Bryant Chou Jun 19, 2026 ▶ 35:22 The Age Of The 40-Year-Old Solo Founder Is Here · Y Combinator
Jul 30, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Jeff Dean: Google adds custom skill definitions for internal developer agents
“Particularly in the internal Google development environment, we have skills so that the agents can know how to use lots of our internal tooling for coding, or for code reviews, or for, you know, measuring performance, or, you know, fetching log files, and thos…”
Jeff Dean Jul 30, 2026 ▶ 24:36 Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI · Y Combinator
Jul 30, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Jeff Dean: Google built a neural simulator 300,000x faster than full DFT
“Take a bunch of output from those simulation runs, the input molecule configurations and the outputs of that. The extensive simulator and then use it to train a neural approximation to the simulator. So this is now a validation device, but instead of it taking…”
Jeff Dean Jul 30, 2026 ▶ 45:05 Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI · Y Combinator
Jul 30, 2026
Assertion Supported
Dean: Sanjay Ghemawat and I published a 30-page code optimization guide
“Oh we actually published the document maybe a few months ago called performance hints that Sanjay and I wrote. That's like a 30 page document about, you know, various kinds of performance tricks and Some people have taken that and then given it in summarized f…”
Jeff Dean Jul 30, 2026 ▶ 21:40 Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI · Y Combinator
Jul 30, 2026 bullish
Insight
Jeff Dean: AI agents can run autonomously for days or weeks
“Probably one thing is people don't quite realize how possible it is to have, you know, agent based systems that can run not just for an hour or two hours on a problem you care about, but for some problem domains and with highly capable models underlying them, …”
Jeff Dean Jul 30, 2026 ▶ 4:56 Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI · Y Combinator
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more