This Week in Startups
00:26:35 · Lon Harris, S0, D.A. Wallach
[00:26:35] S1: Wink. Wink. Wink. Calacanis, Dale. Something like that. [00:26:39] S0: Okay. In all seriousness, I don't know if everybody understands exactly how many subscribers these products have. Anthropic is undisclosed right now, unfortunately. So the game kind of doesn't work. Consumers, according to OpenAI and some reports, OpenAI has 50,000,000 subscribers. 50,000,000 subscribers in their consumer base out of their 900,000,000 weekly users, about 6%. So the game is off. I was kind of goofing on it when I teased it. But let's talk about that as a concept because in all seriousness, the one I always go to is, and I'll just ask you to give me your best guess, your best, best guess, D. A. Wallach. How many subscribers does Microsoft three sixty five have? Microsoft Office. And this is obviously the most successful business subscription service. I'll give you a little clue there. Most of... That's the most successful one of all time. I'm gonna [00:27:47] S2: guess. 200,000,000. [00:27:50] S0: Very close. 110,000,000 subscribers. It's extraordinary when you think about that. It has over 10,000,000,000 in estimated annual revenue for consumers, but paid subscribers 110,000,000 is the best I can estimate here. And if these things are at 50 and these are consumers prosumers, this is an enormous subscription business. Do you think consumers will ultimately pay $20 a month for this like they do for their Netflix? [00:28:20] S2: You know, I think think [00:28:22] S0: And agents?
00:28:22 · S0, D.A. Wallach, Dave McClure
[00:28:22] S0: And agents? [00:28:23] S2: Do think both Apple and Google haven't reached their steady state offering yet clearly. And you know, in so far as the mobile phone remains the preeminent computing platform, it's theirs to lose. So my assumption is that at some point in the future, Apple Intelligence is going to be at parity with these things. I mean, it'd be a real screw up for... I mean, it's already... They've already screwed up by not being there today. Okay? But they're the biggest... You know, one of the biggest companies in the world, they're not hemorrhaging cash the way that all their competitors are right now on AI infrastructure. So they've got a big budget that they should be dedicating to ensuring that everyone who uses an iPhone is not paying a $20 a month cloud subscription or OpenAI subscription. [00:29:17] S3: Do you think that's a up or do you think that's a good bet? Because I think they intentionally decided to wait it out. [00:29:22] S2: I think they're patient. [00:29:23] S0: I think they have [00:29:24] S2: the distribution. So they're in the pole position here. And, you know, I I would be doing the same thing they're doing. I mean, I I would assume that they're trying a lot of stuff in... Inside the company. And once they get to a product that they feel is good enough, safe enough, user friendly enough, that's just gonna be what's preloaded. Right? [00:29:46] S3: And get up, then they buy instinct. Exactly. For $10,000,000,000.
00:29:46 · Dave McClure, D.A. Wallach
[00:29:46] S3: And get up, then they buy instinct. Exactly. For $10,000,000,000. [00:29:51] S2: I mean, I think they can wait. They've got the distribution, and, you know, we'll see if Sam Altman's mobile device, whatever that ends up being, is gonna actually be the next platform. I don't think the Meta Glasses are likely to display cell phones. So as of yet, we have not found the successor to the iPhone and the same can be said of Google and obviously they're further ahead on AI than Apple is. So it's also theirs to lose when it comes to the people who are using Android phones.
00:30:22 · S0
[00:30:22] S0: Founders, here's a practical and tactical tip for you. Before you raise even a single dollar, before you even think about making that first or second hire, you need a real professional looking website. Every investor, every recruit, and every customer is going to Google you, then they're gonna wind up at your website, and you need them to walk away feeling confident that you're an established, real company that cares about your image. And having a beautiful, stunning website, well, yeah, of course, that can sound expensive, time consuming, maybe even a little intimidating if you don't have taste or you don't think you have taste, but you don't need to start seeking out tons of developers and designers. No. You just sign up for Hostinger. I checked out their AI website builder, and with a few clicks, I was already working on a clean landing page and a wait list sign up for a new startup idea I had, and we built it all in minutes. Hostinger's help doesn't stop when you've launched your website. No. Their AI agents will walk you through the basics of SEO, writing crisp website copy, email marketing, and more. Go to hostinger.com/twist and use the code Twist for an additional 10% off. They're already shockingly low. Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing. Here's your chart before you go, Dave. Apple services, obviously, really huge. Anthropic 65,000,000,000 run rate. I guess if they're all subscription, we don't know if tokens have broken out there, OpenAI 50,000,000,000, Netflix 49,000,000,000, Salesforce 40,000,000,000, Adobe 27,000,000,000. People have talked a lot about that one being at risk and obviously Spotify has done pretty well.
00:31:51 · D.A. Wallach, S0, Dave McClure, Lon Harris
[00:31:51] S2: Can I just say one last thing, Dave, before I hand it over? Yeah. I have not given access to my email to anything yet. Really? That's my red line. Wow. That's what's going on [00:32:06] S0: in your email. [00:32:06] S2: What's going on? Well, a lot [00:32:08] S0: a lot of That's This is your Gmail. Stuff from, like, twenty years ago. Think you're corporate. [00:32:12] S3: I'm not saying what [00:32:13] S2: platform I'm using, but I have not given the keys to any of these guys. And I'm I'm... To me, that's the test. That's the test. Can you get... You know, can you get a 100,000,000 iPhone users to hand over all their data to one of these new companies. Absolutely. Apple is much more likely. Well, there's something going on. [00:32:38] S3: I think maybe- [00:32:39] S0: I have an idea for you, A. All you got to do is make a shadow email, make a new one, D. A. New at, and then all your emails that come in from this point forward get sent there. And then your old account is human only, and the new account is human plus machine. [00:32:55] S2: Then- It's complicated. [00:32:56] S0: It's a little complicated, Jason. It is complicated. Before we go on, [00:33:00] S1: we should shout out harmonic.ai. Thanks. [00:33:03] S0: We've another pause for the cause. [00:33:04] S1: No, for that amazing chart that you showed, we're comparing all the subscription services, pulled that directly from our friends at harmonic.ai. Thanks to them.
00:33:04 · Lon Harris, S0, D.A. Wallach, Dave McClure
[00:33:04] S1: No, for that amazing chart that you showed, we're comparing all the subscription services, pulled that directly from our friends at harmonic.ai. Thanks to them. [00:33:11] S0: Okay. And everybody go get harmonic.ai, especially if you're in the VC business. Basically imagine you had a database of every possible deal and a custom made LLM put together with it. Incredible for research. [00:33:23] S2: If I'm handing the keys over, I would much rather that that AI be predominantly local. [00:33:29] S0: Yes, me too. [00:33:30] S2: Know, this this edge stuff, I mean, know, again, for the top enterprises doing really complicated workflows and multi agents, all that's probably all gonna be cloud. I get that. But like, I still find the argument persuasive that for the average consumer, 99% of what they're gonna wanna use AI to do will be doable on the edge, on their iPhone, within a few years. So why wouldn't that be where we ultimately go? [00:33:55] S3: I think you were bringing up an interesting point about the consumer subscription. I think you were looking at customers, not necessarily users. I was doing a little research in the background here. Sorry, I didn't follow your rules. Top three consumer AI platforms, who do you think is one, two, three? [00:34:13] S0: It's got to be OpenAI and Google are pretty similar. I'm going to say Google on top, OpenAI, and then ChatGPT. [00:34:18] S3: Close. OpenAI is number one. Google Gemini is number two. Guess who's number three? You were not correct.