piecerough

So it turns out that the AI boom introduced a new exit strategy compare to 10 years ago.

Inflection, Adept, Character and many others they all went through founder drain. Big Tech not only acqui-hired, but also paid some royalties or licensing fees to likely keep investors happy.

What's this trend telling you? Why does this approach all of a sudden makes more sense than classic acquisitions?

I'm a FAANG employee and I believe high growth days are over. Layoffs and cost cutting are taking the fun out of these big tech conglomerates, making it not just hard to grow career-wise, but less entertaining too.

It seems that startup growth however is accelerating at much larger pace. Lots of companies got easy money and are hiring. What's the catch? Is this a bubble about to pop? Why aren't FAANG employees switching more aggressively?

I'd like to understand better the real costs of running a startup where custom LLMs are needed (e.g. any of the popular OSS ones, Mixtral or LLaMA)

How much runway do you get in practice with 1M?

I'm wondering if mass layoffs are coming back. It's clear the market has recovered, but entered a semi stable state.

What indicators do you look at? What's the sentiment around your workplace?

As a user, I keep seeing every other service or startup I used moving to subscription-based models. However, they weren't even bringing enough value without subscription or with ads. Even free or low-cost subscriptions services are seeing flattening subscriber growth.

In an economic downturn where people look more careful at their spending, isn't it counterintuitive that more and more companies introduce subscriptions or hike prices up?