Elad Gil

Arbitrage vs Innovation - consider that startups that are using technology to make an existing market more efficient are profiting due to arbitrage of technology. Consider that startups that are using technology to create a new form of value are innovating.

Technology arbitrage is kinda boring, but can have big rewards. I imagine the profit distribution among these startups looks kinda bell curvish.

Technology innovation and commercialization is a different game - here you have a few big winners effectively creating new paradigms, followed by technologies that may add marginal value in a large number of markets.

Its part of any economy to have a mix of those who arbitrage and those who innovate. Silicon Valley is no different.. in fact, you could argue that the arbitrage plays are necessary to create the funding environment that can facilitate technology innovation. I find it a useful lens for understanding the startup infrastructure.

To further refine the lens, you can look at through the asset class that each startup is attempting to create (personal reputation, team, tech, users, profits, strategic value) - Elad Gil has a good blog on this http://blog.eladgil.com/2011/01/m-ladder-position-your-startup-to-sell.html.

So, I see what the author is saying, but really I think she is looking through the wrong lens. Funded innovation sits at the top of a complex economic ecosystem of interconnected, evolving pieces.

Something interesting about the startup scene in India is how the center of gravity has shifted over the last 10 years from Bangalore / Hyderabad to New Delhi. Elad Gil's recent post mentions this: http://blog.eladgil.com/2020/10/unicorn-market-cap-industry-towns-2020.html with Bangalore having 8 unicorns vs Delhi's 11.

"While Bangalore continues to thrive, some point to bad governance locally (traffic, high rents, passive government) as one of the reasons it is not the only center. There are undoubtedly other reasons, but it is worth thinking about relative to San Francisco longer term."

Edit: he has another article with si6nce explanation about CEOs need to directly interact with employees when the company is of certain size

https://blog.eladgil.com/p/back-to-office

But reading between the lines, he seems to consider remote workers being the lowest performers and a danger to the company culture and mission.

If fell he is also deliberately missing the point of remote work even when it hits him in the face, for example

> a few companies anecdotally see more employees going back in NYC offices than SF. This probably has more to do with local work culture

Agreed on ML being in production in a lot of places and has been quite valuable, particularly for large incumbents. I write about this a bit here:
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/ai-startup-vs-incumbent-value

I think the difference this time is the types of capabilities provided by transformers vs prior waves of AI are sufficiently different to allow many more types of startups to emerge, as well as big changes in some types of enterprise software by incumbents - in ways that were not enabled by pre-existing ML approaches.

Congratulations to them! It's impressive, and the product seems really interesting.

But having 9 VC invested in your Company is really not an idea situation. (cf: http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/04/vc-signaling-coming-home-to-roost.html)

I am wondering why they did not want to/could not raise money from one VC only who would have lead the round (with say $3M) with super angels and individuals completing the round. That would have made their Company so much more manageable at the board level...

Best of luck. This is something that will make people's lives better.

Unsolicited advice, but I highly suggest following Elad Gil's posts both on what kind of CTO would be good (http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/02/hiring-first-5-engineers-what-sort-of.html) and also doing extremely intense reference checks (if it doesn't feel too thorough, you've not reference checked enough) - Elad has a good guide on that too. http://blog.eladgil.com/2013/03/reference-check-candidates.html