Here’s a short list of posts for AI founders looking ahead to 2024:
Startups must add AI value beyond ChatGPT integration: One criticism of startups that claim the mantle of AI is that they are creating thin wrappers around other folk’s technology. This sort of platform risk is not new, but is a pertinent mental model in the OpenAI-era. In this piece, a technology CEO digs into how startups might be able to build something more defensible. And secure.
Speaking of platform risk, startups are learning the hard way that relying on OpenAI’s tech can burn them: Just as Apple took out a bunch of apps as it expanded the native functionality of iOS, OpenAI is going to chew up market space as it expands its own product remit. Startups will want to build far from its edges, perhaps, to avoid being eaten.
How to bootstrap an AI startup: While we have spoken with a host of AI-focused venture investors lately to get their take on what founders should do — and not do! — in the current market, not every startup needs external capital. You can always bootstrap. Even in the AI realm.
OpenAI’s crisis will sow the seeds of the next generation of AI startups: The upshot of the OpenAI mess is that there’s reason to think that we are seeing the formation of the next great cohort of startup founders; call it a mafia or merely a collection of former co-workers, but it’s clear that the OpenAI crew are unified in a manner that has us sitting up and taking note.