Unsupervised Learning with Jacob Effron
00:53:03 · Jacob Effron, Erik Bernhardsson, Patrick Chase
[00:53:03] S0: What's the biggest mistake you've made in building mobile so far? [00:53:06] S1: I don't know. I I think one mistake I made in the past is that I think sometimes, like, you kinda wanna sequentially do things. You're like, well, first, we need to do this. This is the blocker. We'll get to this other thing later because this other thing, you know, is blocked on this. But, like, in a world where, like, everything is moving fast, like, one of the things I've learned is, like, sometimes you kinda need to do both at the same time. Like, you need to assume that, like, oh, we're doing this thing to unblock it. You might as well do this other thing at the same time just in the interest of moving fast. That's something I I... I'm naturally, like, not mega aggressive, which is kind of ironic because, like, we've run 15 x in the last twelve months. So I I sort of had to retrain my brain to, like, be a little bit more, like, aggressive in saying, like, this is a massive market opportunity. We need to be even more, you know, deploy... Like, hiring, deploying capital, like, whatever it is. Like, massively just, like, paralyzing everything that we can. [00:53:56] S2: Sweden has a ton of interesting startups that have emerged. What are your thoughts on on why that is, and has the Swedish House Mafia been replaced by the Swedish Tech Mafia? [00:54:07] S1: Funny. Did you know that, like, one of the Swedish House Mafia members was my classmate? It's a fun JVF. Really? [00:54:13] S2: I did not know that.
00:54:15 · Erik Bernhardsson
[00:54:15] S1: Yeah. Back in the early nineties, growing up in in Sweden when I was eight. He told me my bike was ugly. I was very upset. Yeah. I mean, we've had a lot of tech in in in Sweden, Klarna, you know, a bunch of gaming studios. Mean, recently, obviously, Lovable and Agora, stuff like that. I I think... My theory about, like, a lot of this stuff is, like, success kinda just creates success. Like, you know, a lot of, like, what makes people go into tech is, like, they know about some cousin's friend who made a lot of money in tech or something like that. So a lot of it is, I think, just, like, a little bit of a flywheel effect. I I do think that Sweden as a European country has always been pretty entrepreneurial and commercial. So I do think there's little bit of that. Like, we've always been a little sort of maybe going back to the Vikings, like, of let's go conquer the world. In the past, maybe it's been through music and furniture and stuff like that, but now increasingly with tech. So, you know, there's that. Like, I I think there's sort of a mentality in Sweden. Like, you can actually... Stockholm is, like, funny because, like, everyone in Stockholm thinks they're, like, this, like, mega global city that's, like, part of the world in a way we, like, actually think they aren't. But, like, I think the fact that they think they're so global is, like, kind of good. Like, they they have this, like, vision that, like, everyone cares about Stockholm, but I actually kinda like that because it means, like, they're out there, like, building, you know, things, and they're saying from day one, like, we're gonna conquer the world. Like, we're gonna do this startup, and it's gonna be awesome. And and I like that, like, the sort of megalomania.
00:55:39 · Jacob Effron, Erik Bernhardsson
[00:55:39] S0: I now have this vision of, like, your elementary school reunion and just what a wild a wild group that would be. I I... That's quite that's quite the the the cast in what I imagine was not a a particularly large class. [00:55:50] S1: Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of a random fact. [00:55:52] S0: I guess a a shameless question. Do you think GP rental prices twelve months from now will be higher or lower?
00:55:52 · Jacob Effron, Erik Bernhardsson
[00:55:52] S0: I guess a a shameless question. Do you think GP rental prices twelve months from now will be higher or lower? [00:55:57] S1: I think higher. You know, it's funny. Like, I actually changed my mind on this, like, in the last forty eight hours, and I'll tell you why. I I read the Anthropic s one, and I actually had a, you know, agent summarize it for me. But it was kind of incredible how profitable that company is. And I... It... To a degree that I hadn't anticipated. I I thought that... Like, in my mind, like, forty eight hours ago, my argument was like, oh, Anthropic app. Like, they have really good gross margins, but they're spending so much money on training that, like, as soon as they go public, they're gonna have to, like, slow down in how they grow training and post training, and they're gonna, you know, maybe grow inference as much, but but not the other stuff as much. But then, like, I realized, like, they're basically a profitable company. So, like, they have, like, zero incentive to slow down on, like, capacity capacity acquisition. And and I imagine there's a similarly dynamic going on in OpenAI. And so I... And and OpenAI and Ontopic has obviously been, the biggest two buyers of capacity out there. And so the fact that, like, I don't think they're gonna slow down buying, you know, because of, you know, clearly, like, financially, they're doing very well. I I think it will mean that, like, there's gonna be a lot more demand. And and I think for that reason, prices will probably go up on the next twelve months.
00:55:57 · Erik Bernhardsson, Patrick Chase
[00:55:57] S1: I think higher. You know, it's funny. Like, I actually changed my mind on this, like, in the last forty eight hours, and I'll tell you why. I I read the Anthropic s one, and I actually had a, you know, agent summarize it for me. But it was kind of incredible how profitable that company is. And I... It... To a degree that I hadn't anticipated. I I thought that... Like, in my mind, like, forty eight hours ago, my argument was like, oh, Anthropic app. Like, they have really good gross margins, but they're spending so much money on training that, like, as soon as they go public, they're gonna have to, like, slow down in how they grow training and post training, and they're gonna, you know, maybe grow inference as much, but but not the other stuff as much. But then, like, I realized, like, they're basically a profitable company. So, like, they have, like, zero incentive to slow down on, like, capacity capacity acquisition. And and I imagine there's a similarly dynamic going on in OpenAI. And so I... And and OpenAI and Ontopic has obviously been, the biggest two buyers of capacity out there. And so the fact that, like, I don't think they're gonna slow down buying, you know, because of, you know, clearly, like, financially, they're doing very well. I I think it will mean that, like, there's gonna be a lot more demand. And and I think for that reason, prices will probably go up on the next twelve months. [00:57:09] S2: I've heard you say that you've always thought of modal as your twenty year project. You're five years in. What do years ten through twenty look like?
00:57:09 · Patrick Chase, Erik Bernhardsson, Jacob Effron
[00:57:09] S2: I've heard you say that you've always thought of modal as your twenty year project. You're five years in. What do years ten through twenty look like? [00:57:21] S1: Wow. Mean, I'll hire a bunch of people that can do a lot of those sort of, you know, I'm too in the weeds of, like, everything right now. So I... But I don't know. Like, I I I just, like, love this stuff. Like, I I I love to keep working on this. Like, I I think, you know, year ten to fifteen, we're gonna look more like a conglomerate. We're gonna have a lot of different products. We're gonna have probably some, like, crazy bets going to moon and Mars or whatever. But I I still hope to be quite involved in the sort of the high level, like, resource allocation and what are the things we're betting on, and I'll probably be less involved in sort of day to day, like, you know, let's get a contract from this GPU vendor, like, whatever. But, like, I think that, like, sort of, like, high level, like, resource allocation and stuff like that to me is... That's the most fun and and hope to to stay involved in that for for for another twenty years, hopefully, maybe longer. [00:58:09] S0: Yeah. I mean, if we keep current pacing at least five more unsupervised learning episodes in that time frame. [00:58:14] S1: Right? Yeah. Exactly. [00:58:16] S2: Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. We'll give you kind of the the last call to action for the audience. If there's... Where can they go to learn more about Modal or anything that you would direct them to?