00:03:40 · Georgie Healy, Xharmagne Carandang
[00:03:40] S4: Hi. I'm Georgie Healy. I run the AI accelerator at Google, which is for Seeden Series A AI startups. I also got into podcasting late last year. Big fan. And it's called In the Blink of AI. [00:03:59] S0: Hey, everyone. I'm Xharmagne. I'm a founding software engineer at Lorikeet. What we do is we try to help companies scale really, really good customer support using Gen AI.
00:04:11 · Sachin
[00:04:11] S2: Awesome. I think Adam and I ran one of these in San Francisco about six months ago around the future of media. And I think the thing that we took away from that experience was that we really felt like out of every piece of content we've ever done, from documentaries to podcasts, this one really felt like democratising some of the most insightful conversations I think all of us have behind closed doors. And particularly right now in this moment, I think there's a big gap between what the general public are talking about in terms of AI, all the way to where the people who are on the frontier, people like you guys are talking about. And I think this is an opportunity to kind of open the doors of that conversation, and kind of share that with our audience. So we've got a few questions, and we're going to take this in a lot of different ways. But I think the first place we want to start is one that's quite personal to me. Like I used to work in venture capital, I used to think about funding cycles a lot of the time. But it feels like in this moment we're in right now, feels like a particularly buzzy point of the cycle. You know, we had I have a note here, one of the company's thinking machines, former OpenAI exec raised, you know, billions of dollars pre product. Where do you guys think that we are in VC hype cycle? And also, does that change how you're thinking about running your businesses and thinking about capital needs ongoing? Maybe Dan, it'd be cool to start with you because you've just announced a round recently. Congratulations.
00:05:38 · Daniel Palmer, Adam Miller
[00:05:38] S3: Yeah, thanks so much. I think when you have a technology that so clearly will cause big impact on the world and on industry like AI, it's almost inevitable. I think you're going to see phenomena like you're seeing right now. And you can call it a bubble, perhaps from a literal economic standpoint it is a bubble, but really what we're seeing is a race to figure out who is going to both dominate stuff like platform, but also dominate and figure out the use cases, and I think the sort of inherent way that VC is set up is that people place their bets. And so I think we will see a lot of those bets fail, and I think that's part and parcel of how VC works, and I think we are seeing massive massive numbers. But I don't know, if you look back at the .com bubble, maybe the last sort of similar sort of situation I guess, what are we meant to take away out of that, right? Was the internet not useful? Were people not meant to invest or innovate on software internet companies at the time? I don't think any of those are the takeaways, and so I think it's almost hard to, we can accept maybe it is a bubble, but I don't think that necessarily means we should be trying to innovate or invest any less in AI than we are now. I think we're doing the necessary processes of society and as a technology industry to explore the technology? [00:07:03] S5: Yeah, I think as a
00:07:03 · Adam Miller, Sachin, Xharmagne Carandang
[00:07:03] S5: Yeah, I think as a [00:07:04] S2: build on that, I did VC during 2021 to 2024 almost, and I saw so many companies that raise their crazy valuations, then do flat rounds or down rounds. And there's nothing that kills a company's momentum more than a down round, right? Because most employees' ESOP is underwater, there's just this lack of momentum, and these companies were promised these massive ongoing funding rounds, and they kind of just dropped and then crashed. I think maybe this is an interesting question for you, Xharmagne, because it's like, as a founding member of Lorikeet, you guys are up against some really, really well funded competitors. How do you guys think about, like, capital efficiency and, like, how much is required to win? I know Steve said this quote when we interviewed him, but saying that, money in doesn't mean good product out. [00:07:54] S0: Mhmm. It's it's the typical problem of just because you throw more engineers at a problem doesn't mean it will solve the problem faster kind of thing. So what we try to focus at at Lorikeet is more efficiency and focus, especially on the customer. Like, what are their actual needs? That way we can focus on the top, I don't know, 20% of what would actually move the needle and not waste all this money and need all this money that might just be wasteful. Yep.
00:07:54 · Xharmagne Carandang, Michelle Gilmore
[00:07:54] S0: Mhmm. It's it's the typical problem of just because you throw more engineers at a problem doesn't mean it will solve the problem faster kind of thing. So what we try to focus at at Lorikeet is more efficiency and focus, especially on the customer. Like, what are their actual needs? That way we can focus on the top, I don't know, 20% of what would actually move the needle and not waste all this money and need all this money that might just be wasteful. Yep. [00:08:25] S1: It's a really good point. I was on a panel a few weeks ago with Steve Yeah. At the AFR Summit, and we were talking about domain expertise as a as a moat and the notion of that. And I think the investment that you raised is a really good example because Mira raised 2,000,000,000, Relevance, pre strategy, pre product, pre plan. Yep. But her herself, like, she's a very good, safe bet if you're an early stage VC. And let's let's be honest, they are betting. Mhmm. Any that say that aren't, they aren't. I'm lying. Right? They are betting, early stage particularly. And so she's a she's a pretty good bet. So her current plan will probably not likely land where they sat in the meetings and defined it to be. But will she do something meaningful? Absolutely. I think the certainty is probably higher. It's a crazy amount of money, but I think that what's interesting is the domain expertise bet. It's the founder bet. It's the pedigree bet in terms of capability and certainty of being able to do something amazing, which is incredibly hard.
00:08:25 · Michelle Gilmore, Sachin
[00:08:25] S1: It's a really good point. I was on a panel a few weeks ago with Steve Yeah. At the AFR Summit, and we were talking about domain expertise as a as a moat and the notion of that. And I think the investment that you raised is a really good example because Mira raised 2,000,000,000, Relevance, pre strategy, pre product, pre plan. Yep. But her herself, like, she's a very good, safe bet if you're an early stage VC. And let's let's be honest, they are betting. Mhmm. Any that say that aren't, they aren't. I'm lying. Right? They are betting, early stage particularly. And so she's a she's a pretty good bet. So her current plan will probably not likely land where they sat in the meetings and defined it to be. But will she do something meaningful? Absolutely. I think the certainty is probably higher. It's a crazy amount of money, but I think that what's interesting is the domain expertise bet. It's the founder bet. It's the pedigree bet in terms of capability and certainty of being able to do something amazing, which is incredibly hard. [00:09:42] S2: And just to build on there, I think it's also a bet on her ability to attract talent. Like, if Zuckerberg is paying anywhere between 10 and 100,000,000 for top AI engineers, I think a lot of them would want to work for Mira regardless. And so like then quickly a billion or 2,000,000,000 doesn't seem like that much money if she has the ability